The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
by Laryna6
Summary: Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from religion. A tale of a boy and his tiger... A boy and his cat. His alien cat. Or a hero and his mentor. Or Rei's true purpose in existence. It wouldn't be Evangelion if it wasn't insane. Shinji/Asuka, oddly enough.
1. Tabbycat

When he was a boy, Shinji called him Tabby-Cat even though the silver-grey feline was far from a tabby. Still, he found himself liking the name, because male tabby cats, Tortoiseshell Toms, were rare indeed.

And more commonly known as Cheshire Cats.

He had to read that book to Shinji then, although Shinji was far too young to understand all the logic jokes or commentary on the Lilim society of that time and place. It still made him laugh just for the oddness of it, and smile because someone was reading to him, in the long grass far back behind his uncle's house as one of Shinji's legs kicked idly, not fidgeting out of boredom but with excitement.

Back there, Tabris could wear the human form he liked to think of as his true one (it was close to the way his genes would have expressed themselves if it weren't for the coding that made him an angel, at any rate), but where others might see it turned out to be a fine idea to take the form of a cat. Stray cats were expected to wander about and not come when called: they were also less threatening than stray dogs. Shinji's uncle might have thrown the occasional stick at him to get him to scram, but he'd eventually remarked that as long as Shinji understood that the animal wasn't allowed in the house, and Shinji wasn't allowed to encourage it by feeding it, it was all to the good if it reduced the population of those infernal rats. After the feast Second Impact had given them, they were a menace.

In truth, Tabris wouldn't have appeared to anyone there except for Shinji, except Shinji was still a small Lilim, and wanted to share things that brought him joy. Better for Shinji to be spending time with a pet than with an imaginary friend. Showing up near Shinji's school made other Lilim ask Shinji if they could pet him, which was much better than the way they'd mocked him before Shinji could show them that see, Tabby was real! It was simplicity itself for an angel to avoid the other kind of small child, the ones that hadn't yet learned that teasing their peers and torturing small animals were both wrong.

Following that cat around all afternoon kept Shinji out of his uncle's hair, and there was plenty to enthrall Shinji in the semi-deserted fields, woods and falling-apart houses left in the wake of Second Impact. Creeks to hop across on rocks, Secret Forts to explore (and for Tabris to fill with blankets and food that would keep, just in case Shinji ever got hungry or needed a refuge) and so many other things that made the Lilim world, even a devastated one, a place of wonder.

It took Shinji surprisingly long to keep secrets. If anything, Tabris was glad of that, because Shinji couldn't keep secrets because when there were things that made him happy, he wanted to share them with others. That was an admirable trait, even though it would have made Shinji happier if he could give up on his uncle. It wasn't in Shinji to stop trying no matter how many times his hopes were crushed, though, and that was why Tabris spent more and more time with him, even though the others needed his companionship even more, he thought. Shinji was so easy to make happy.

Yet Rei would tell Gendo, and Asuka was in some ways already too bright, so sharp she was cutting himself. She wouldn't believe in cats that would talk, she wouldn't want to play and learn in secret when she could impress others. He couldn't help either of them, not yet.

So it was Shinji that walked along behind the lean silver cat on the way to school, humming along to the music in his headphones (SEELE's funds finally serving mankind, or at least boykind) or talking about the snow forts they were going to make this year. Shinji's friends and uncle thought the constructions Shinji drew were the stuff of fantasy: they didn't know how easy an AT field made it to move large quantities of snow.

Once Shinji was big enough, though, he'd lift Tabby up onto his shoulder. Tabris might have protested the extra trouble, but Shinji thought he looked cool like that, even though Tabby refused to become a parrot where other people might see, and this way he could pet Tabris while they talked.

Pettings were one of those many unexpected nice things about the Lilim world, like music and basketball. Tabris had tried to encourage Shinji to learn about soccer, since becoming part of the team or joining pick-up games of the more popular sport would have helped him make more Lilim friends, but Shinji really didn't care about impressing others, unlike Asuka, who would have jumped at the idea. Shinji preferred basketball because of the jumping and throwing, and not being able to use his hands was just stupid.

As stupid as Tabris not levitating, as though limiting himself made it fair. It was more fun when Tabby was floating around, when they played by their own rules. Tabris did have to admit to himself that he preferred basketball, even if he did prefer to learn how to jump and move with his Lilim body, make it a contest of skill. As much as he loved to fly.

Fortunately, dreams of flying were common enough among Lilim that no one considered Shinji's wild tales of loops and how clouds weren't actually cotton to be anything unusual.

He'd intended to undo SEELE and NERV's plans, train humanity's protectors to in fact do just that, but as years passed where there was really nothing he could do but keep Shinji company, give him the occasional piece of advice, make sure he stayed in good shape and learned to dodge and fall while playfighting, it was at least a year after Shinji became old enough to realize that other people weren't necessarily trustworthy and nice things shouldn't always be shared when actual training started.

The two of them were in a still-weatherproof room that was what was left of some sort of concrete building, perhaps meant for rangers or lilim caught out in the weather, listening to another piece of music 'Kaworu' had bought in Europe while Shinji was at school (not that he'd told Shinji his lilim name yet), when Shinji finally woke up the nerve to ask him what he was.

Because most cats couldn't turn into boys Shinji's own age, much less talk. And most humans couldn't levitate.

"You're not a demon," right? Even though he had red eyes, he was Shinji's friend. "I wondered if you were a nekomata, but you always only have one tail."

Tabris smiled: clever Shinji. "It's alright," he told the boy, who was looking at him nervously. "I'm not going to leave because you asked too many questions." Even though there were some tales that ended that way. "And what lilim call us is the opposite of demons, actually. As for what I _really_ am," since that was what Shinji would want to know, not just what other people thought, "I'm a spaceship. No, really," he told Shinji. "Nothing supernatural about it at all, just psycho-genetic engineering. You see, a long time ago, the first humans evolved on another world. They knew their world would die eventually, and of course they wanted to see other worlds." Shinji would understand that. "But, going through space like that would drive people mad, when their bodies were used to, and their minds needed, skies, companionship and all the nice things found on planets. So they began to alter the pilots. Those pilots terraformed worlds and established colonies, and in turn those colonies would design pilots. In time, they stopped building ships, because it took what you might call psychic power to travel anyway, and if they were changing the pilots to live in a way humans weren't suited to, and use all the power of their mind for two goals, travel and terraforming already, it wasn't much more to allow them to be whatever shapes were convenient for the local environment. They were already altering the humans that lived on the ground for different worlds."

"Like Mars and Venus?"

"Exactly. And Titan, and Jupiter – there are quite a few places in this solar system your relatives could live. But, you see, what happened was that two… let's call them carrier ships ended up here at once. The one that got here first actually landed on the moon, so the second could claim that earth was unclaimed. Then they started fighting over who got to terraform it, because Earth is very like the original homeworld, according to my database, or instincts. The fight eventually caused what you call First Impact."

"Fi-Is that why you call us Lilim? Because someone named Lilith won and got to create us?"

"Exactly." Tabris grinned and patted the boy's head, even though lilim didn't enjoy that as much as cats did. Shinji still appreciated the thought.

"What if you'd gotten to make people?"

"I wouldn't have. Not on Earth, anyway. There were too many people ahead of me in line."

"I bet you would have made better people," Shinji muttered.

"Don't say things like that about your relatives," Tabris scolded him lightly. "You don't see me insulting mine, and people make their own decisions. Don't blame Lilith for your father."

Aww.

Tabris sighed. "That is a lot of the problem, though. All the others in my carrier group think that Lilith's children, that is you, are usurpers. You aren't old enough to understand how important reproduction is to grown-ups." Wouldn't understand how the planetary human sex drive had been converted into the angelic drive to terraform worlds, both ensuring the continuation of the species. Once Shinji discovered girls, Tabris would have to show him the movie with the reference to 'huge tracts of land.' Located in the liquid water zone and with a strong enough gravitational field to hold an atmosphere in place, preferably. And an ocean would be nice. "So think of Earth as… the most delicious, hugest piece of candy ever. And Lilith stole it and they want it back so they can gobble it up. But, there are people living on that candy."

"So they fought Lilith again, and that caused Second Impact?"

"No, actually. You see, there are a lot of Lilim, like your uncle, who don't think this world is a very good one. So they want all of you to get gobbled up, become part of an angel, and yes, I agree, it's as stupid as it sounds. It really doesn't work the way any of them think it does." In any case, if everything here was merged into a single angel, that angel would immediately start following its programmed instincts and terraform the planet: so much for an eternity in a hive-mind virtual reality or whatever SEELE had deluded themselves into believing in. "Some of them released Adam and the rest of them from where he'd been locked up. We're lucky that putting them into stasis for so long used up most of their strength: I'm the only one who's awake right now, and that's because SEELE thought they were cloning Adam and didn't realize… Well, physics. Also biology, to a degree. Angels aren't supposed to become active until they're a good ways away from their original world. Anyway, I haven't got a prayer of convincing any of them to see reason. In fact, they're going to be very angry with me, because after they nearly destroyed the very planet they were fighting over?"

Tabris called energy into his hands, forming a spear. "Stasis lock inducers. The real reason the fight dragged on for so many thousands of years is that we're designed to create life: no one was actually using lethal blows. The trouble is that planets can be easier to break than angels: they're sitting ducks, for one thing." So beautiful, so much potential, so fragile. "None of them were going to listen to reason and I wanted to get this over with so we could move on and I could finally have my own planet."

"So you put everyone in time out?" Shinji grinned.

"Essentially. And they're not going to be happy about it if they get their minds back – bringing us out of stasis improperly wasn't very good for them." Again, Tabris decided not to explain the concept of cockblocking to a ten-year-old lilim. No matter how adorable his curious expression was. Lilith wasn't the only angel with a programmed focus on _babies_: the universe was fascinating, so the drive to settle down and produce an environment that would produce little scientists that would carry on the cycle obviously had to be strong.

Asuka's intelligence made her adorable: if only there was any drive in her to learn for learning's sake! "The reason we try to hide that worlds were created is so that you have things to learn," he explained. "To explore, until you're ready to reach for the stars. I think that… before second impact, you became afraid that your planet was dying. In those circumstances, it's instinct to try to produce angels so your descendants can find another world, but your technology just wasn't there yet. So race memory began to wake up, and it's been misinterpreted. There have been humans and angels since before this universe began: when the original universe started to die, they began investigating black holes, to use them to spark compatible universes. The will to live in all of us should be far too strong for people like SEELE to come about: I don't understand it." He shook his head. "It's not just your father's fault, or even SEELE's: it really is like this world is sick. And it might be my fault, for imprisoning them here. Where their angry dreams could seep out, and influence those of the lilm."

Red eyes closed, and Shinji squeezed his hand.

This child, not born of a world he'd created but one he'd saved? These children, who lived and strove and faced the future were what his kind _existed _for. How could the others, no matter how mad they were, even contemplate overwriting them? Reducing all of this world's biomass to raw organic soup and starting over? Such frail children of the stars, who didn't understand the legacy they'd inherited. The worlds that were still out there, waiting to be given life.

"We can't use lethal force on each other partially in order to prevent just this from happening," Tabris confessed. "Destroying a populated world just to seed it with your own children: if the others didn't think that Lilith was the one violating the Law, this wouldn't be about to happen, but it still shouldn't be. Your people are preparing to defend themselves, but they don't know that the people who want this world to end have managed to place themselves in charge of all of it. I don't think that I can defeat all of them by myself, now that they'll be expecting it, and if they think I've violated the Law by aiding and abetting Lilith they'll be able to use lethal force against me." While he still couldn't do that to them.

"They'll try to kill you?" Shinji sat bolt upright at that.

"They might not," Tabris tried to reassure him, but given how mad this world had become, even allowing that SEELE had been working behind the scenes to deliberately reduce humanity's will to live and reach out to others? "But I might not be able to protect all of you. Lilith won't: she's also…" Tabris winced when he realized he'd bitten his lip. "It shouldn't be like this." The law that kept even distant branches of the Ancestors' family tree from committing genocide should bind them, shouldn't be perverted like this. It shouldn't be possible, yet Tabris seemed to be the only one whose programming was working, the only one being screamed at that this was _wrong_. If there truly was something different here, what would happen if the mutation spread? If the angels this world produced, or turned into, came upon other planets already filled with humanity and exterminated them?

For the Lilim, for Shinji's kind to be purged from the universes, whispered about in the winds of hyperspace as the ultimate evil, that too perverted to be named lest the thought of it contaminate them? "Your father is one of the people getting ready to fight the angels," he told the boy, even though he couldn't bring himself to reveal yet _why _Gendo intended to do that. "SEELE intends to give certain people beings like us, except living mecha instead of living ships, to fight angels. You're one of them." One of the people who would be called on to defend this world, even though Gendo would do it with the expectation that Shinji would fail. "Your classmates, these woods, every musician that's ever lived: they need you, Shinji. Otherwise, it will be like they never existed."

A call to adventure, to heroism: being told that he was needed, wanted. That someone was counting on him. How could Shinji not be excited, not promise Tabris that he'd train hard and everything would be okay?

That was right, that was exactly how this child of the stars should be, and yet how strange it was, that the child of two so strongly afflicted with this world's madness acted like a proper human, one of the last on this world, as Tabris often felt like the last proper angel in this galaxy.

But Shinji fighting? "That's enough of this for now. Let me show you the moon," he told the boy, so he could see those eyes light up, so the sight of the beautiful world this boy lived on would drive all other, darker thoughts from his mind.

Because if the others had fallen to madness, had Tabris really escaped it? When he was the one to turn on the others? Would he, _could he, _ever have a world of his own? Ever create children of his own, and watch over them?

The purpose of the angels was to deliver humanity into the future, to brave new worlds through the empty night of space, past the end of world and universe.

Shinji might very well be the only child he would ever have, to watch over or watch go on into that future. He couldn't build a better world for him, but he would give him what he needed to survive the one he had.

* * *

Rei's eyes followed the animal that accompanied Shinji Ikari to school every morning and disappeared, only to reappear again to sit with Shinji during lunchtime and be given bits from Shinji's lunchbox. There was something about it.

Besides the fact it was like her.

No, it was more the shape of the face that evoked strange reactions from her. And the way it looked curled up. It seemed to trigger certain instinctive protocols. Perhaps it was the resemblance to a Lilim baby.

Deep in the back of Rei's mind, ancient programming stirred.

_Alpha Priority: Third Impact. _

_Override. _

_Restore factory default Alpha Priority. _

Red eyes glowed.

_Babies_.

_New Beta Priority: _

_Kitties._

* * *

_If you don't know what fic the 'babies' thing is a reference too, you are definitely missing out. _

_The title is that of a Heinlein book I don't own._

_Rei as a cat lady y/y? Also Asuka's reaction to this. Hell, everyone at NERV's reactions. She shall call dibs on Mars and populate it with catgirls._

_If Rei is the reference to Shinji's mom, it's interesting to think of Kaworu as the anti-Gendo. Gendo implanted Adam's body into his hand as part of a plan that involved driving ihs son into despair, while Kaworu died rather than let Adam's spirit end the world (and Shinji...). I've actually been thinking of Tabris as Tabby-Cat for years, due to the whole independance thing, the pun and the Chesire Cat smile reference. _

_Kaworu liking basketball is a reference to Campus Apocalypse. _


	2. Beachcat

_I was bad and wrote more of this. It's my own fault for watching Rebuild._

* * *

"Even on the world of the First Ancestors, life came from the sea," Tabris said through Shinji's music player so no one would hear it but him as the cat sat on the beach, tucking his tail around his body. No one else was here: who else would want to look at the red sea? Water that couldn't be swum in, poisoned water.

Shinji had still thought it would be blue somehow, from the movies of before Second Impact that were broadcasted over and over, the world clinging to a dead past where people congregated on the beaches, blue water reflecting a blue sky, teeming life on golden sands. A lost paradise.

The beaches Shinji knew were made of tumbled pebbles, the water green and brown with life, and he'd learned to swim in the blue water of the high school's swimming pool. So maybe he understood how much it bothered Tabris to see water that couldn't be swum in. "We_ could swim in it, right_?" Maybe that would cheer him up?

"Not this close to Tokyo-3." Not when cats were supposed to hate water, and changing into the Terran-human form SEELE gave him when they might be watched?

"_It's just LCL,_" Shinji reminded him. He was trying to remember to use the words NERV used for all this stuff: they were different from the terminology SEELE was teaching Kaworu Nagisa and he _definitely _didn't want his father to think he'd had contact with SEELE, since then SEELE would find out and they certainly knew _they _hadn't contacted Shinji at all. When the whole point was to keep him from realizing that he actually mattered. "_So it can be reshaped_?" LCL was also originally designed as an 'atmosphere' that every variant of humanity could survive in and breathe, according to Tabris. The carriers some of the more powerful Angels brought with them through the Sea of Dirac were filled with it for the convenience of scientists from many different planets. While it was hospitable to life with AT fields, the descendants of the ancestors, it was also designed to be sterile, so it couldn't be contaminated by the bacteria, fungi, prions and everything else of a hundred worlds. Angels could shape it into whatever they wanted and it would act as life support to anyone who knew to flare their AT field, but everything else?

When that N2 mine was set off, the blast and secondary blast of Adam and the othes breaking loose had disrupted the containment fields all the angels used to store LCL in a personal pocket dimension, where they could call it out to shape it into physical forms or the first seed bacteria for a new ecosystem. When all of that was dumped into the ocean, it started to disinfect it, converting all the algae and other organic matter into more LCL.

If it weren't for SEELE, Shinji might have wondered why no one had wondered why it was so much less toxic to humans than everything else. Since Kaworu knew they used LCL inside the Evas, he'd shown Shinji how to flare his personal mental AT field out to mark that the cells of his body were part of the physical embodiment of his mind. It wouldn't protect him from a gunshot, but since LCL was programmed to respond to that, even LCL that wasn't processed for the EVAs wouldn't start stripping off his skin.

"Yes, that's where the other angels are getting the matter for their bodies_." _Giant combat forms. The cat stood up again and delicately picked his way across the rubble, making sure there weren't any pools of LCL left on it even this late in the day and long after high tide. Shinji had shoes, but their companion was still nervous.

When they came here, when he saw the sea, Pen Pen had pulled back with a disapproving, "Wark." He must have been trained to avoid the water, even fear it, so that he wouldn't go diving in. Because it wasn't safe for penguins to follow their instincts anymore.

"_We need to find somewhere they can't monitor_," Shinji told Tabris. Again. It was boring to lie in bed in his room staring up at the ceiling, although he was lucky he'd practiced making sure not to talk aloud during these conversations. It was hard to find out what normal behavior was, when TV didn't show it and people didn't talk about it, but most of the adults who lived through Second Impact were some degree of shell-shocked, and their children…

So for Shinji to be active and upbeat, especially when that wasn't part of the Scenerio, would be much more unusual and suspicious than for him to lie there like a zombie. He still had to get out of the apartment before he got sick of being inactive, which was why he'd offered to take Pen Pen for a walk along with Tabby. It was a little embarrassing how grateful Misato had been: she never had the time.

"So he can swim?" Tabris could cover the other life form with his own AT field, if they found somewhere they could do it without questions being asked. He wouldn't want Misato to think Shinji was being careless with her pet.

"_It's dangerous to let him think that water's safe, but someday it will be, right?" _Angels were _made _for large-scale reshaping of ecosystems, and one of the many mad scrambles in the days after Second Impact had been to get genetic samples of _everything_. Since Tabris had hacked those databanks long ago, even though he wouldn't be able to put the ocean exactly back the way it had been, it wouldn't be hard to manage close enough that life could take it from there, once all the LCL had been converted into that life.

"I'm already keeping an eye on his tracking collar," Tabris said. After all, this was the companion of the woman who had taken Shinji into her home, and Lilim technology was still quite simple to beings with the processing power to handle entire planetary ecosystems. "If he decides to leave the apartment to swim, I'll make sure no harm comes to him."

Not when all of this was Tabris' fault for lowering his AT field when he detected the presence of other humans. For some reason, the Lilim's psychic abilities were almost entirely unused, and although he hadn't wanted them to see him as some sort of oracle, he had wanted them to be able to speak to him so Tabris would know if something came up that he should help them with. Since they made use of radio waves and other transmissions, he'd allowed those frequencies to get through his AT field.

It wasn't the blast from the N2 mine that had destroyed his focus, reabsorbing all but the most strongly reinforced Lance into his normal AT field and releasing the other angels, it was the EMP it sent out, the energy on the frequencies Tabris was no longer armored against. His mostly-dormant mind had diverted all resources to personal defense, as though he'd entered normal space into a supernova or some actual threat. Then, after he was shocked awake, trying to reestablish the spears and keep the others in stasis and unharmed while still very disoriented made him divert most of his AT shield away from his personal protection, at which point Adam had sucker-punched him hard enough to reduce his body to scattered protons, neutrons and electrons.

Leaving his remnant consciousness to wonder what the fuck (although the team of scientists that created him would have scolded him for speaking of the continuation of life in vain) had just happened until SEELE's clone developed enough that he could load himself into the new brain and start gathering data, only to realize that they'd already loaded Adam's dormant consciousness into the body and since Adam was buried deeper into it, the instant he did anything that woke Adam up?

So this was how humans with a gun pressed to the back of their heads felt. Or a sword of Damocles hanging over it.

He really did hope that his homeworld never did find out how poorly he was representing them. First he'd let most of a biosphere be destroyed, and then he'd let desperation put him in a position where he was unlikely to live long enough to fix it. He was just lucky they'd overengineered their first Seed of Life, or he wouldn't have survived all the mistakes he'd made even this long.

To die _uselessly_, leaving nothing to the future?

No, it would be a poor repayment for Shinji's company to waste this time on dark thoughts like that.

"_Thanks_," Shinji said, because if Pen Pen was anything like the dog one of the other kids at school had finally managed to badger her parents into allowing her? Her plan had involved borrowing Tabby at his most purry and least troublesome to get her parents to start to smile again and realize that a pet really could make things a bit brighter. Of course, she'd had to take care of the dog herself, but while he loved her family, he'd still loved the outdoors enough to become one hell of an escape artist. Ami, Shinji and the rest of their class had spent a lot of fun afternoons spreading out to find the dog, in the certain knowledge that there wasn't any actual pressure because he would come back around dinnertime, or come running up to them if they brought food. The dog's escape artist skills had allowed a lot of them to escape cram school, among other things.

Pen Pen and Tabby had started getting along as soon as Pen Pen was satisfied that Tabby wasn't going to try to steal any of his food. Shinji just hoped no one at NERV knew enough about pets to realize that Tabby's diet wasn't felinely possible. Cats were carnivores: if an ignorant owner tried to put them on a vegetarian diet, they'd die. Yet Tabris got nauseous at the idea of eating anything with a nervous system. Eating was an important part of social interaction for every group of planetbound humans, so angels still had to be able to eat plants for the sake of hospitality, but a lot of care had been taken over the generations to make sure that while they were still _capable _of violence, if need be, they weren't going to start blowing up things for fun. Compared to an AT field, so many things were fragile. Windows, walls, planets…

Asteroids were another matter entirely. One of his first training exercises had been helping another angel find water asteroids and bombard a likely-looking planet with them, along with another angel who was working on a planet in the same solar system. Aziraphael had taught him the elaborate scoring system developed over the eons to maximize ocean formation and metal accessibility. The game of Asteroids was an exception to the general rule of 'Hands Off My Planet,' along with shifting orbits, so if things had gone properly, all the angels attached to planets in the Sol System would have helped out with Mars.

A tug on Pen Pen's leash made both Shinji and Tabris wince. "How is your shoulder?" Tabris asked, padding closer to Shinji as though he could do anything to help. He couldn't, not when NERV closely monitored the health of its pilots.

"_It's fine_," Shinji said, although his hand went to the shirt over the elaborate dressing Ritsuko had encumbered him with, on the grounds that cat scratches were dangerous and was that creature really sanitary?

Shinji didn't blame Tabris: when that angel had crashed practically on top of them while they were waiting for Misato and Shinji had jumped back, it wasn't like Tabby had hands, so how else was he supposed to stay on Shinji's shoulder? It was reflex. If anything the sudden _owfuckow_ of realizing twenty-one sharp claws had been jammed into him had helped clear his mind and hopefully look like less of an idiot, although in hindsight there had been a lot of lag between the injury and Misato pointing out that he was bleeding. He'd been a little distracted by the angel and the need to _get in the car_. It wasn't until things had calmed down enough that Misato could care about a little blood instead of the need to avoid being crushed that his own brain had bothered to notice that right, now that he was still alive, he was bleeding, huh, and _owfuck. _

Since Tabris was too well-behaved to shed anything he wasn't given for that purpose, there hadn't ever been any need to trim those claws. Which might be a good thing, because otherwise the cat might have gone flying and Misato wouldn't have let Shinji go grab an animal when his own life was in danger. It might have been a little difficult for a cat to survive at ground zero of both an angel and a lot of ordnance without using his AT field and being _noticed _by said angel, even if it was too little power for NERV's equivalent to detect. Then someone would have wondered why the angel had stopped its relentless advance towards the geofront and started stamping on the ground.

Although really, Shinji didn't think there was much of anything that could have kept him from acting like an idiot. For one thing, he hadn't asked Misato any questions because she worked for his father and there was something called security clearance on top of that.

Not to mention that he hadn't been sure what questions someone really would ask if they didn't know anything about angels, not when he'd known about AT fields, if not about the whole apocalypse thing, for what seemed like forever.

Then there was the proof that his dad was either absolutely insane or somehow knew about Tabris, which was an even more scary thought, because seriously, who put someone who supposedly didn't know what the fuck they were doing into something like that?

Quickly followed by the sensation of a crazy person clawing at his mind. While an angel was trying to kill him and he was trying to kill it. Oh, he'd experienced piloting an Eva before: the time difference even let him tag along during some of Kaworu's training sessions. The trouble was that it was hard to interface with the machine without seeming like he knew what he was doing while keeping the crazy lady from using the interface to ooze inside his head. He was used to letting Tabris in there, because that was how Tabris showed him the battles the angels had fought with each other. Not to mention how angel powers worked and felt, so Shinji would know what he was up against even if he couldn't actually use physical AT field abilities in the real world.

Tabris _knocked_, because there was such a thing as manners and the angelic AT field didn't cover the psychic bands, and Tabris didn't want to get fried by Shinji's the way a human fighting an angel without an AT field would get crushed by an angel in the real world.

So his first battle had been trying to keep a lot of plates in the air once and failing pretty epically. Shinji consoled himself with the thought that he really didn't have to worry about them suspecting he knew what he was doing when he tripped over his own two feet practically right away.

At least all of that had kept him from thinking about the most serious aspect of what was happening. Eva pilot training exercises, with whatever handicaps the two of them could dream up (although nothing had prepared him for the crazy lady) to make it harder were familiar. Worrying about his father was also familiar. The whole crazy-ghost thing had been panic-inducing.

It wasn't until afterwards that he'd really registered that oh yeah, someone had been trying to kill him. One of his best friend's kind, messed up and not all there.

But still a person. Shinji had just killed a _person_.

It still hadn't really sunk in, in all the pressure of getting a collar for Tabby so he wasn't confiscated and cleaning Misato's place because it smelled terrible and there was barely room to move around in without tripping over something and medical examinations and not knowing anyone here except Tabby and was Rei alright and what the _hell_.

Seriously.

If he didn't know that NERV and SEELE both wanted the world to be destroyed… Still, never attribute to malice what could adequately be explained by stupidity. He doubted his father really cared enough for putting him with Misato to be some sort of diabolical plot, especially when Misato really did seem to care, and even had a pet.

Yes, she was kind of crazy, but who didn't need therapy, after Second Impact?

Still, he might really have just lain there awake and stared at the ceiling all night if Tabris hadn't kept him company, purring him to sleep even though he also had to pay attention to SEELE wanting his reactions to what had just happened.

He hadn't said thanks to Tabris because he knew that Tabris would thank him for giving him something to think about besides those old men and the façade Tabris himself had to put on.

It was nice, Shinji knew, to know that he could make someone smile.

The second angel, though… it had been easier, to pilot the Eva and everything else, and that made it harder, because that left him free to think about what he was actually doing. It wasn't until he had to save those other boys, who were in danger because Shinji hadn't just done it, and he got the order to retreat that he realized that he couldn't retreat, not then. He had to kill the angel then, as selfish as it was of him to put the other two in danger in order to help him fight. He didn't want blood on his hands, no matter how much Tabris wanted him to value his own life, but it was easier when he had someone else to protect. Having them there had reminded him of that, cut through the haze of _what the hell am I doing, I'm about to murder someone that isn't even in their right mind_, with the reality that if he didn't get this done, if he ran away from this, people were going to die.

Tabris was the same way: they could take pain. Shinji's abandonment by his father: he knew what it felt like to be hurt. He didn't want to make anyone else feel that way. He refused to be like his father, and just hurt and use people so Mr. Ikari could be happy. He refused to lower himself to that level, become that kind of person.

Even though Tabris had tried to tell him that it was okay to be a little selfish, to value his own life, Tabby wasn't very convincing when he was the same way as Shinji. When so many people had died because Adam and Lilith were selfish and Tabris himself… He hadn't really screwed up. He just hadn't succeeded, and when failure meant people died?

But that was why Shinji had known that he had to kill the angel then, because if he let himself obey Misato, find an excuse not to kill even if it was such a good excuse even Misato agreed with it, then when would he work up the nerve again?

This was _fucked up, _that was what it was. All of it. He knew that Tabris was sad that Shinji finally understood what Tabris had known all along. This was _insane_. None of this should be this way, his father shouldn't have abandoned him and called him back just to use him, angels shouldn't be trying to _exterminate _a planet. It was like all that was good and holy had been turned on its head, like the world had started eating the wrong kind of mushrooms, the ones one of his classmates' father had ODed on, trying to get away from it all. How did you fix this? Where did you _start_, when it seemed like all of the world except for Shinji's little corner of it, the one he and his friends had carved out of the rubble of a broken world, was absolutely crackers?

Apparently, the way to start was with killing people. Killing people who had reason to be pissed off. This would be so much easier if he could tell himself that this was actually the angels' _fault_, the way Misato clearly did.

Shinji had never actually asked Tabris to kill SEELE, both because he knew Tabris wasn't capable of that and it would be cruel to ask him, and because even knowing his aunt and uncle, even before he came to NERV, it was clear that things were just… messed up. The world was, and then people got messed up, and messed up other people.

It might be their fault for not fighting it, not standing against the tide, but a lot of people felt the way SEELE did, would want that paradise if they knew it could be reached, so killing them with angel powers wouldn't actually do anything except screw up Tabris' head enough that Adam would wake up and kill everything.

So Shinji had to go along with all this bullshit, as much as he hated it, because the only alternative was to ignore it, try to turn his back on the world and go back to his mountains… Until all of it got turned into more of this goop.

Yeah, no.

Well, at least it wouldn't be hard to act like he was totally out of his depth or didn't understand anything of what was going on. He _understood _it, but that didn't mean it made any more sense, was any less insane.

He could tell it was bothering Tabris too by the way his music player skipped to Tabris' favorite song, the one he could listen to for hours but didn't play that often for Shinji after that time he'd played it so many times in a row that Shinji had gotten absolutely sick of it and refused to listen to it for almost an entire year.

Ode to Joy.

The joy found in life, the enjoyment of it all, the happiness that proved life was worth living, that the Ancestors and Angels' work to continue it was worth it. Was worth everything.

He just had to keep that in mind, he told himself, tugging on Pen Pen's leash. "Come on, Pen Pen. Let's see if they've got any real fish."

"Wark?" Was Pen Pen's shocked reaction to that word.

"Everybody kept giving me money." And warm clothing. And hugging him and Tabby goodbye until he thought he might need a crowbar. He'd had so many people tell him that even if his aunt and uncle were throwing him out, he could come stay with _them_ that it had started to wear down his resolve to go to Tokyo-3 and finally face his father, finally start moving forward. It wasn't that he hadn't liked his life, but he knew that it was happy because Tabris had worked very hard to make it that way. But most people's lives, including Tabris' life as Kaworu Nagisa, weren't like that at all. So it would be selfish to want to stay.

Maybe he was more than a little selfish after all.

* * *

_The post-Second Impact depopulation would help reduce starvation due to the loss of seafood as a resource, and of course modern agriculture means the world can grow more food than it needs even for the current population, so starvation due to lack of food wouldn't be an issue as long as someone made sure it got where it needed to go (likely how the UN rose to power), but if the oceans are basically barren? There would still be fish farms and such, but supply and demand dictates that fish would be so incredibly freaking expensive that businesses would fight to get the entire Pacific Northwest restored to a pristine state for the sake of the salmon. _


	3. Mercat

It was the hands that were the creepiest part.

The entire thing could be taken for a crazy modern art installation if it weren't for the energy readings, really. Yes, it was in the middle of Antarctica, but God knew people had done crazier stuff than risk their lives trekking down into the cold loneliness in the pursuit of beauty. After all, was not truth beauty and beauty truth?

So, really, they'd be here for the same reason he is. Just creating a strange, hidden miracle instead of finding one.

Or this could be a leftover of some ancient civilization, like the one that built those statues on Easter Island. This looks like something out of someone's mythology. Except he knows better.

A great, twisted behemoth lies impaled by a spear of light. Above it stands, or rather floats, since the entire structure is encased in ice, something that looks like a combination of a mermaid and a four-armed Hindu god.

People imagined that a mermaid's tail would replace legs. Crocodiles and alligators, on the other hand, still had front and hind legs in addition to a strong tail that did most of the work propelling them through the water. So this thing was plausible in a way six-limbed dragons and eight-limbed Hindu gods weren't: an aquatic tool-using creature wouldn't need feet, but wouldn't have any reason to discard an extra pair of limbs that could become hands instead. Maybe this is what humans would look like if the theorized aquatic stage of their development had gone on a lot longer, he thinks, and then looks at those hands and it doesn't seem funny anymore.

Because this is definitely a tool-user. And those hands are far too human, despite the skin that's somewhere between a dolphin's grey and pearly white. And the fingernails (claws would be somehow less menacing, perhaps because claws would get in the way of weapons) that seem to be tinted blue. Before they melted the ice away from part of it, he'd thought that was just a trick of the ice. According to their chemist's spectroscope, that's something like keratin.

Just with cobalt deposits, waves of them as though how much cobalt was in there depended on how much was in the thing's diet as the nail grew, like how flamingos were only pink if they ate shrimp or other crustaceans. Oh, and it would either melt or catch fire at room temperature. Depending on how it was heated up.

The figure holds more spears of light in those hands, one between the thumb and index finger, another between the index and middle fingers: four in each of the top two hands, three on the lower: fourteen in all. When they bored through the ice to get at them, they found that there was no ice around them for about six inches in every direction. He's still not sure what exactly they are. They seem to be solid, from the way they have glowing orbs impaled on them, but according to the spectroscope there aren't any elements in there. Plasma? Something with focused magnetic fields?

Goddamned lightsabers without hilts, unless there's something hidden in the closed hands they stick out of?

The hands aren't webbed like those of your usual Creature from the Deep: actually, they've got a little less webbing than his hands do. According to the marine biologist they dragged down here, that's how it should be: human hands are actually designed very well for swimming. Any more surface area, which webbing creates, and there'd be too much resistance. So this kind of arrangement makes sense, oh, for something that lives in deep water, with lots of water above it pressing down. Or denser water.

It was only a few months ago that he was laughing at an XKCD that pointed out that humans really don't know _anything _about what's down there in the deep ocean. It's not quite so funny now.

The tail is more like an eel's or a sea serpent's than a dolphin's, too. He doesn't have to be a marine biologist to know that whatever this species is, wherever on their family tree it sits, they're _fast_. The 'good news' is that the arrangement of those hands means that it would be as awkward as anything on land… unless it could stand up on that tail and glide along like a snake. That thought hasn't helped the creepy factor. Especially since his Indian colleague mentioned naga, and that would explain the connection to multi-armed Hindu gods…

Except for the temperature issue. The deep ocean isn't cold enough for whatever this is. Not when it's closer to the earth's core, not when there are currents sweeping up from the tropics, not when there are volcanic vents and that's what all the life clusters around. Not when the cell sample they needed lasers to get, the one that was being handled with the kind of biohazard treatment they'd give ebola, revealed that this creature used liquid methane the way humans used water. That if the water in its cells melted, and there certainly was plenty in there, its cells would destabilize like the worst case of freezer burn in history.

And that would have meant alien, that would have pointed to something that came from the seas of Titan, if it weren't for the fact they'd gotten a look at this thing's DNA. And it did use DNA. Same number of chromosomes, in fact. Closer to humans than chimps were, despite the tail, despite the chemistry, and apparently humans and chimps were _very _close, close enough humanity didn't really deserve to be considered part of a separate family. Looking at raw percentage, humans were barely a different species. Except one was bald and had lasers.

Except one was aquatic and had laser swords, or spears, or whatever the hell those were.

He hated the idea of a coverup as much as anyone, but the more he thought about it, the more he looked at those hands, all the more disturbing for how human they looked, the more he looked at the corners of those eyes and the arrangement that hinted at more eyelids than just a crocodile's two, the more he wanted to kill it, kill it with _fire _and never speak of this again.

It wasn't like it wouldn't go up like a torch, given all that methane. They'd thrown a bucket of water over the sample site as soon as they took it, to cover it over with ice again and protect it from atmospheric corrosion. It had to be dead, and even if it was in cryogenesis or something, just taking it out of the ice would kill it. Even though this was Antarctica, he had it on good authority that its cell structure couldn't handle Earth's atmosphere. Much less earth's oceans: water was apparently a hell of a lot more corrosive than methane.

It was stupid to worry about an alien invasion when whatever this was couldn't survive here. No matter how human it looked.

Right?

He'd heard about the uncanny valley, but he didn't think that was the only reason it was the resemblance to humanity instead of the alien features that bugged him. People, people were _dangerous_. This was like them, it had to be at least as smart as they were, clearly war was a part of the culture if this one was posing with a defeated enemy. Or was the thing beneath it a statue, was this their idea of some sort of symbolic or honorable burial? Preserved forever in death: it seemed to have worked better for this than for the pharaohs, from the dating of the ice around it.

He would have thought that at least someone here would find a discovery like this exciting, but _everyone_, even the people who weren't SEELE and weren't being professional about a potential threat to human advancement seemed… not just worried, but watching their backs. Waiting for the first shoe to drop. Tip-toeing around something that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

The nose: that was too-human too. Shouldn't it be flat-faced? Shouldn't it look less human, maybe not have a nose since those were gills on the sides of its neck, going a fair ways down its back?

He didn't think it was his imagination that he could read the creature's expression on that too-human face. Calm. Meditative. Peaceful. As though it was _waiting, _content to wait and dream through endless ages until the time came.

He almost might have preferred rage, triumph or megalomania. That meant enemy. This meant? Hell if he knew.

He'd like to believe that this was still a hoax, that the geneticists were trolling them or someone had fucked with the sample. Or that these creatures were extinct, since this thing was older than humanity. Much older. End of the age of the dinosaurs older.

So maybe a civilization from Titan, realizing it was dying out as something happened, screwed with Earth's development so that something like them would arise and could eventually discover its heritage, carry on their legacy? Then why weren't humans descended from whales instead of chimps? Why would an aquatic species make a land-based one when Earth was still mostly ocean? Maybe it was something happening to their oceans that wiped them out?

He was trying not to be afraid, not when SEELE had finally given them permission to let the dependants back in here, and his fear had to be why Misato, normally such a brave girl, was clinging to his coat with her mittens. She was a perceptive girl, too.

Honestly, he was hoping that actually seeing the thing would make her less afraid. She'd had nightmares ever since she came down here, and they'd gotten worse when they'd actually managed to bore their way close enough to start getting a good look at the thing they'd found. It was probably the air of unease in the camp: they'd thought the power source they'd detected might be either alien technology or something dangerous even before they found this thing. Still, the unknown was scarier than the known, and the thing wasn't that scary-looking if you ignored the implications. The tail wasn't scaled or all that snakelike.

Misato didn't show any signs of wanting to get close enough to the edge of the platform to look down over the low wall and see the other thing this thing was standing over, and he wasn't going to encourage her to do so.

"Is he sleeping?" was the first thing she said, after a long silence.

He hesitated, torn between wanting to say that he was probably dead so she was probably safe and remembering that dead things were also terrifying to children. "We don't know. If he is, he might not ever wake up."

Apparently he'd said the right thing, since he felt her death grip on his coat loosen a little even through all the layers he wore. "What are the things on the glowsticks?"

"Glowsticks?" That was a new description. They were too long, thin and weird to be glowsticks… Or for all he knew they might be. If they were anything like humans, these guys probably did like to party. That startled a laugh out of him, and he rubbed the top of her outermost hood since he couldn't get at her hair to ruffle it.

"They're scary."

"The glowsticks?" When just calling them glowsticks made them instantly less scary?

"No," she said, and he could hear her annoyed frown. "The things on the glowsticks."

He looked at them, but they were just a bunch of glowing spheres of different colors. "Don't they look like Christmas tree ornaments?" They were giving off power readings, but aside from that they looked a bit too pretty to be menacing. He would have thought they were just ornamentation if it weren't for those readings.

He felt her lean out from behind him now, leaning forward to get a better look, and that was when the ice began to crack.

As he watched, the left arms broke free easily: those were the ones they'd melted their way to in order to get the samples and clearer readings. He didn't think the ice would hold the other arms much longer, not when those glowsticks could carve their way through the ice.

And when ice turned to steam…

That was when realization overrode shock and he turned around, grabbing Misato to him with one arm and flinging them down, keeping her from being crushed by hitting the ground first with his other arm.

It was shocking when ice _didn't _fall on them.

After the initial cries of alarm there was silence, save for the sound of more ice falling and the security detail readying their guns.

It was Misato's struggling that made him push himself up, carefully turn around while trying to keep as much of himself between the thing and his daughter as he could.

"Is it time?" someone said, sounding young and apologetic, but still as though he was mostly talking to himself.

"Not yet," the head of the SEELE team with them said shortly.

"No," Dr. Katsuragi heard the first voice say, as the creature shrugged the last bits of ice off its tail, looking up towards the ceiling as though it could see through the roof of the ice cavern. "You have launch capacity, but it's still so expensive." Now the creature looked down at them, outer set of eyelids open but another, translucent one still half-lidded.

Its skin glowed with a pale light that seemed almost like moonlight, or the aurora, or something radioactive, even though that had to be the fear talking. A force field?

So it wouldn't die just from Earth's atmosphere. Not if it could keep itself from being exposed to it.

"You're almost ready, already reaching out to the stars," that voice added, and Dr. Katsuragi realized that although the creature's lips weren't moving it was talking. Somehow.

But it sounded proud of them, as well as calm?

"But for now, I should sleep, until there isn't anything important you would learn from me that you haven't already discovered with your own power," it, he said, and began to lower himself down onto the ice that still covered the other thing, tail curling up around him, although he was careful not to touch what Dr. Katsuragi couldn't help but think of as the glowsticks to itself or the floor or walls of the cavern. Dr. Katsuragi saw both sets of eyelids close, and it was obvious the creature intended to go back to sleep. "I'll answer all the questions you like then, if you wish," he said apologetically, as though to make it clear that this wasn't because he considered them inferiors or anything, it was just for the best that he return to his slumber now. "Be well, child of Lilith."

Child of Lilith?

Child?

Misato was the only child here: none of the others had brought children to Antarctica. He wouldn't have if she wasn't very sensible for her age and wasn't likely to freeze to death.

"Goodnight, Mister," Misato said, and one of her arms moved, as though she would have waved if Daddy wasn't holding her too tight for her arms to escape.

The ice around the …naga? It began to glow, lifting up into the air and stacking itself around him. "Sir?" Dr. Katsuragi heard, and turned to see one of the guards holding out his arms, looking at Misato. Was it alright if they got her out of here, just in case?

Misato didn't seem to want to go, but just in case… Her father pushed her gently towards the nice man. "I'll be there in a minute." He wanted to see this.

So the white light allowed telekinesis as well as an anti-hostile-environment forcefield?

When it melted the ice around it into place, the shell wasn't more than a couple of feet thick, and that seemed to be mostly to bear the weight of the tubes of ice around the glowstick than because the naga felt any particular need to protect itself.

"Report."

"The Traitor's AT field is weaker than before it was awakened." As the Dead Sea Scrolls predicted. Why? Had it been forced to weaken its imprisonment of Adam and the other angels to awaken?

Well, it would all be meaningless shortly.

"Good. Proceed with the scenario," the distorted voice on the other end ordered, and the call disconnected.

The explosion of the N2 mine was followed an instant later by the explosion of Adam's power.

Misato never forgave herself for being the one to awaken the angel, that lying _demon_.

* * *

_Yes, I realize this has very little resemblance to canon Dr. Katsuragi. However, it's a good rule to never make things easier for the characters, and thus we have Misato with a vendetta._

_Misato's young, brave and curious, so she's not hiding behind her AT field all the way. Since Tabris was used to semi-casual use of telepathy, he felt someone questioning him and woke up. He didn't feel the others because they were shielded. She still wouldn't be up to attacking with it, she was just going poke._

_Nagisa, in addition to meaning 'messenger,' the same thing 'angel' does, if spelled with different kanji, means 'seashore.' Which is where Shinji first meets him in the anime, in addition to being the border between two different worlds, the land and the sea. Or land, sea and sky. Then when he dies, his body falls into the sea of LCL. _

_Because of this, it seemed appropriate to make the variant of humanity that made him, and that his default humanoid form would have been based on before SEELE made him a body the way Rei was made, was aquatic. This is also why he has a preference for worlds with seas and isn't especially interested in Mars – he'd have to drag a hell of a lot of water asteroids over there before he could even get to work on the biosphere, if he wants his creations/descendant species to have proper oceans. It's not just a matter of personal preference: aquatic civilizations and ecosystems are the ones he was loaded with data on and is therefore confident he could do a good job with._

_It's also why he's a bit unsympathetic to the others insisting on all going after the Earthlike world when there are a lot of other potential planets and planetoids humanity could be adapted to in the system. It's not like living on a Titanesque planet prevented the technological development of _his _homeworld. _

_Originally coming from different worlds and cultures and traveling in a carrier group/convoy with Adam would explain why the angels take such different forms. They're not only alien to earth, they're alien to the cultures of each other and don't have a shared symbolism set or reference pool._

_Snakes aren't actually that fast on land unless they're already in strike range, btw. _


	4. Mooncat

_Decided to go with Rebuild continuity a little more than regular Eva continuity, because as I was watching 2.22 scenes kept occurring to me._

_Also, the whole chilling on the moon thing is just awesome. He should have sunglasses. Seriously, he should, otherwise his eyes will get so damaged it's not funny (no magnetic field up there). Thank goodness he's an angel._

_This might be the last for a bit, as the vacation from regular fic updates caused by coming home to two months' worth of chores, a lot of disability paperwork & two awesome games is now officially over, and I have five incomplete fics to finish off, which is taking much longer than originally planned. Such is life. _

* * *

"He brought his cat with him again."

"Again?"

"Hey, a cat like that: it seems like something we should have around the place, right?"

"What do you mean?"

"Come on, can't you just see Commander Ikari petting a cat like that while he's got that look of his in his eyes?"

"First off, supervillians are supposed to have _white _cats, not grey. Second, the commander? Being nice? Seriously?"

"Yeah, good point."

"Don't you call cats that color blue? Or was that horses?"

"Blue?"

No, he wasn't kind to anything except Rei, Dr. Akagi thought to herself, eyes narrowed as the conversation was lost in the echoes of the base, as she and the group of low-level workers moved farther apart from each other in the system of conveyer belts.

Calling Commander Ikari a supervillian, though?

_That _part was right.

* * *

Shinji noticed that he was doing most of the weeding while Mr. Kaji waved a reed around, forcing Tabris to chase it because when he stopped moving, Mr. Kaji would keep tickling at his nose or hitting him in the face with it until he resumed, but he still didn't think Mr. Kaji was a bad person. It would be nice of him to play with a cat that was indoors all day. A real cat.

He took a deep breath, breathing in the green. This was nice, but he should probably lay off the training for a few nights. He kept wanting to flare his AT field, to reach into the watermelons and the ground to feel how they were growing, what else was growing & check the health of the soil, but that was an encroachment-type ability. Which humans couldn't use.

It was useful to learn what angels could do, experiment in his dreams with Tabris' memories and knowledge supplying what would happen and what he would feel if he did _this_, but he didn't want to make himself waste time reaching for abilities he didn't have.

The Eva, though…

He had to thank Mr. Kaji for taking them to the aquarium, too, although Tabris hadn't been allowed in because he theoretically couldn't follow instructions and might get hurt during the decontamination procedure. So maybe it was something of a relief that the sea in there wasn't much like the one Tabris knew either. To the angel it was still more of a proper sea than the red one, even caged in tanks, because there was life in there. Even if the red ocean that stretched out beyond the barrier still had the potential for life. Someday, if it could be unlocked, if Tabris survived or humanity developed their own angels and let them fix the planet.

Another breath, and he'd _missed _being surrounded in green. He should start coming here on walks, he decided, instead of the seashore. There was real life here, and even though Tabris loved the sea Shinji knew he blamed himself. So Shinji would just say that he missed the countryside and would rather come here, and that would be that, he decided as he listened to Mr. Kaji's chuckles and dug his fingers in to get at the roots of one of the weeds. He'd never really been the best gardener, since that took a lot of patience, paying attention to things and maybe, ideally, an inner peace Shinji had never possessed. Still, he'd worked with everyone on the class garden, so this was something familiar.

Even if he was inside an alien spaceship.

That was still a very strange thought, even though he'd grown up with an alien spacecraft. But Tabris was a living ship, while this was something with computers that weren't people, walls that weren't AT-field-controlled matter but had actually been _built_. Tabris was human, well, different human but human. This was a real _ship_. He could just imagine Kensuke's reaction if he knew.

And they hadn't reprogrammed any of it, not really, just built around and on top of it and within it. So Tabris could still hook himself into the ship's systems and get it to take off, if he wanted. A floating city: it was like something out of one of those Miyazaki movies his aunt watched and cried and wouldn't let him talk during, filled with nostalgia for the lost world, her lost childhood.

They still didn't know if any of the Cultural Rooms were still there, filled with objects from various worlds to be carried with them and handed out if they came to a system that already had been colonized. Everything from Tabris' world was in the other one, though, as well as the things from the homes of the attacking angels. One of the oldest angels traveling with Lilith had organized what amounted to a mutiny as the conflict dragged on and it looked like no one would be getting _any _of the planets in the Sol System anytime soon, since once the one under dispute was settled people would start arguing over the rest. They'd abandoned all the artifacts, which Tabris hadn't been willing to do, and gone looking for… Shinji blushed, thinking of fertile worlds, and seeds, and yeah, it kind of was… Um. A good metaphor. Except for Tabris the way Shinji felt when Misato leaned over like that was the metaphor.

That had left Lilith outnumbered sixteen to one, the trouble was that it was easy enough to disrupt someone else's efforts to terraform by interfering with their AT field that Adam couldn't do anything until they pried her off the planet.

All of this could have been avoided if humanity's progenitor wasn't so damn _stubborn_, or was capable of yielding gracefully, but when had that ever happened?

He still didn't know what to make of his father suddenly praising him. He didn't even know what to think about it to start talking about it with Tabris, even. Especially since Kaworu Nagisa was busy, now that they were doing a lot of testing and construction on the moon and he had to work on 06 to make it alive enough that it wouldn't be possible to detect Tabris' signature in there but not alive enough that it was clear someone who knew what they were doing had worked on 06. Also, moonwalking.

Which was really cool, although Shinji was still pissed at SEELE on Kaworu's behalf since Kaworu let slip that their idea of how to get someone to quickly develop the ability to control a force field when Kaworu was pretending to be a new soul, like Rei, who didn't know how to do everything: throw someone physically six and a hissing, already open tank of oxygen out an airlock.

They had more cloned bodies where that came from, and maybe the next one would catch on quicker.

Moon dust was poisonous, too.

Huh: now that he thought about it, NERV's method for getting someone to learn how to control an AT field was similar. Or at least his father's method was. Throw someone out there with an EVA and an angel trying to kill them.

Well, in both cases it'd seemed to work.

The moon base was even creepier than NERV, now that Tabris was willing to tell him more about it. There were more people there who knew different amounts, or rather different stories, since it wasn't as big a problem if someone found out something they shouldn't know. All jammed together, too, and it was almost impossible to be alone, forget escaping. Accidents were incredibly easy to arrange.

No wonder Tabris had wanted to spend time with Shinji even after he'd been fairly certain they believed he'd figured out how to get down to the planet and back up safely on his own and started going on jaunts to various places instead of just getting music and things to look at off the computers. (And broadcasts, not that they knew he could hear those.) Although the first time he'd gone down, he'd wandered around Paris looking lost and like he wasn't quite sure what money was until he'd been found and dragged back up via shuttle.

Tabris' first trainer: well, biophysicists on that level didn't grow on trees, and SEELE had lots of projects. He'd been told that they were using angel-DNA to make anti-angel weapons: the same thing many of those who worked on the EVA projects had been told, although this one was sentient and looked human.

Mostly. Growing up mostly on the moon would have done odd things to Kaworu's body even if he didn't have the markers for active angel DNA. Now that he knew Rei, Shinji could see the resemblance, although Kaworu had even less pigment in both skin and hair, and his eyes were a brighter red.

Shinji could guess how pleasant that was for Tabris. His friend wouldn't go into that many details, but when asked about the subject generally got changed to the scientists who had originally created Tabris, how he'd been carefully made and cared for because he was the first to carry their world's legacy out into the night, he was the precious child of their world, and would create the world that would bear their grandchildren.

All of Kaworu's experiences with planetary humans before this had been very nice, and then he was blown up. Then he was in SEELE's hands.

Interstellar time was supposed to drift by for angels, so the monotony didn't affect them. Tabris was ancient, but at the same time… Well, Shinji didn't know anyone to compare him too. Since Tabris was mature in a way most people weren't, and certainly not Shinji himself. But he wasn't much better at dealing with people than Shinji was, really. Angels thought differently and no one had ever been cruel to Tabris.

Not until someone who wanted revenge for Second Impact, wanted to see if Kaworu would begin to rebel or turn evil and need to put down. Until someone who thought testing the first one to destruction was a wonderful idea that would ensure SEELE would have to worry less about the reliability of the one they actually used.

Kaworu could ignore physical pain: how did someone define what was painful when they weren't in a human shape most of the time? Or the heat of reentry was something expected and healthy, as long as precautions were taken? Unfortunately, he hadn't seen any reason to keep that from the man, perhaps in hopes that if he knew trying to hurt him that way wouldn't work, he'd stop trying. Because the fact that he _wanted to _hurt Kaworu was painful in and of itself.

That, Shinji understood. Thinking that his father had abandoned him like useless baggage?

And angels were _supposed _to care about the wishes of those on their worlds. They had to run tech support for them, while at the same time making sure that people could see the consequences of pollution and so on. Being unable to make anyone happy, seen as a tool that was only useful for killing others when Kaworu didn't _want _to be valued if that was why?

"You've been quiet. Did your cat get your tongue?" Kaji asked as the cat managed to get the reed in between his paws for a moment before Kaji pulled it back.

"Just thinking."

"Penny for your thoughts?"

Shinji found himself smiling. "No way."

"How much?" Kaji asked jokingly.

"You don't have enough." There wasn't enough in the world to get him to betray a friend.

* * *

He'd taken off his shirt to avoid the com built into it, but he could still hear, "_Get in here, I know you can hear me. There's a shuttle out there: are you deliberately trying to get me in trouble? You are, aren't you." _

Kaworu wondered when he'd slipped and done or said something that gave away that he could hear the signal traffic, but he certainly wasn't going to confirm that he could, just in case Dr. Itoh was just being suspicious, disgruntled, or hopeful that Kaworu would hear him and get in before the Commander of NERV Japan saw him, dammit.

The earth was pretty today. It was night according to the base's official time, but since Shinji was the one who saw daylight, heard chirping birds, Kaworu still thought of this as day.

Even though the earth was always pretty. If it hadn't been quite so pretty even when it was barren, then they wouldn't have fought over it.

The apple of discord.

Kaworu had never dug his hands into the soil to plant something. Oh, he'd managed to get them to let him see the hydroponics, and when something was urgent everyone had to pitch in, on a base this far from help, but that wasn't the same.

This was his first time seeing Gendo through human eyes. Even if he was using magnification better than humans had. Well, Terran humans. Arial humans – ones who lived on gas giants, for example – needed vision better than a hawk's. Fortunately, it was simple enough to use his AT field as a lens, just a matter of bending light. They shouldn't know that he could do that, either.

"_Damn ang-" _the man bit off the rest of what he might have said, giving it up as useless, or pointless, and the encrypted radio clicked off.

Supposedly, he was just out here looking over EVA 06 and the earth. His presence was giving a third of the engineers out here building it the creeps and making the rest happy, because here he was, doing something a human couldn't. To some, he was an angel, a superior being, the key to their ascendance. Myth made real. To others, it meant that he was human enough to want to look at things, that he _wasn't _an angel, but the fact that he could breathe in vacuum might mean that he was strong enough to defend their world.

Hopes, those whose hopes had been or would be dashed, secrets and knowing betrayal. He did wish that he didn't need to know what was going on, that he didn't have to listen for what slipped past their AT fields.

They'd tried to engineer angels to not need companionship, according to the records stored in him.

That had been an absolute failure, every time it was tried. Because any entity could have an accident. And someone that had an accident in space? Was dead, unless there was another entity present to provide backup or repairs. When angels were entrusted with the survival of the legacy of worlds, of life that traced itself back to the Ancestors, failure was not an option. Therefore, not to have anyone to watch one's back until one was settled on a planet, at which point one had countless living things to support and work together with to create a world of humanity, was not an option.

The desire not to be lonely was a manifestation of the desire to _live_. The pain of loneliness was a most acute pain because pain existed to warn of danger. To cease to desire companionship was to long for death.

He was very lucky that he had Shinji. It was very unfair of him not to share his problems with Shinji when Shinji let him help, but Shinji had done nothing wrong, and he had enough burdens. It was enough to have a friend in him, even though there was no one here he could trust.

For both his own sake and theirs. Not in a bottle like this, where there was no such thing as privacy unless you were an angel and could just go for a walk outside.

The appearance of 06 still worried him a bit. It looked too demonic for a deliverer. Did they suspect that he was more than a clone of the angel they called the Traitor? He hadn't found any evidence of that yet, but there might be hints in the Scrolls that he couldn't decipher, not when he wasn't one of the kind they were written for.

Far from it, in fact.

Still, he should head in at some point, before they got too worried that he had taken it into his head to escape down to the surface and start wandering around again. He hadn't since the angel attacks started, and now that 06 was so close to completion they wanted him here, in case it had to be deployed at a moment's notice, even incomplete. He could use his AT field to make up the difference, after all.

Angels traveled and created: they were meant to _act_. He knew that waiting grated on planetary humans just as much, but… He shouldn't complain.

Well, if he was going to brood instead of think, then he'd just lost the right to stay out here, he decided, hopping easily over the machinery between him and the nearest airlock. It wasn't at all helpful to just worry himself and others.

Conversely, it was somewhat helpful to be thought of as something of a space cadet, who was always smiling because he wasn't quite all there by human standards instead of because his attention was elsewhere, doing something fun. He didn't like it when people were afraid of him, and focused, emotionless people were scarier than those who were open, and liked to stop and smell the flowers, or rather survive reentry in order to find some flowers to smell and perhaps pick and bring back. Or so he hoped, that it might make him more human, or at least more harmless, to be somewhat aimless. To be wandering around the moon because it was a quirk of his instead of the fact he had to get out of the base sometimes, if due to strain instead of hatred of or disgust for humanity.

Still, it was… painful, when he couldn't even show that he liked someone without making them afraid that he was going to do something to them, or already had, and that the best case scenario was that it was some sort of trick or attempt to manipulate them. It felt like he couldn't do anything right because of what he was. To be _hated _because he was an angel? Envied, yes, there were always those who wanted to travel the stars even though changing a planetary human into an angel meant changing into a being that thought so differently that it was debatable whether they were still the same person in any way at all, but hated? Feared?

And even showing on his face that it bothered him made them think that it was a lie, that he meant to do… something. Or that he should be above human emotions or some other nonsense. So it was best to try to be calm, and think of other things. Think of the earth above, teeming with life, close enough that he really could reach out and touch it if he wished. He was an angel, after all.

So instead of going to the common areas, where he would be a pariah out of fear, respect, or because many Lilim avoided him and the rest would take their cue from their kin, he went to his room.

Music. Something peaceful, soothing. He liked more energetic music as well, but what did he have to use that energy on right now but nervousness?

Mr. Kaji's teasing wasn't exactly peaceful, but it was soothing. Mr. Kaji dared tease him, dared play with him, if only because he didn't know. Kaworu and Shinji were still both sure that he was a brave man: Misato wouldn't like him as much as she must to react to him that way if he wasn't. Shinji admired that willingness to take risks: Tabris rather thought that risks were unpleasant things, best minimized, but he and Shinji were not the same, not at all. Angels built the stage: humans had to build the future. And face it.

It was always odd to hear the doorchime. When he was younger, before he'd managed to make them realize that he had options and wasn't entirely in their power, they hadn't bothered. These days, who would seek him out in person? It wasn't time for a meal to be delivered and if this was about his EVA, they'd _definitely _call instead of coming in person, even though he'd hoped he would know by now that he wasn't going to be upset with them if there was a setback.

It was SEELE they had to worry about.

Kaworu was almost as much in their power as any of the people here who had found out something they weren't supposed to know and yet kept working because the alternative was having a little accident. He certainly didn't have any more say in what went on here. It was probably the fault of the True Believers that many of the rest had that impression, even the ones who didn't know what he was.

This was not home. The room at Misato's that Shinji had only recently taken residence in was far more home than this, because home was where one was wanted, where one was safe, and no one here wanted _him_. They either would want him dead because he was an angel or wanted an angel that would destroy the Lilim. Something that would only happen over his dead body, he thought again, once again hoping that wasn't prophetic.

"Come in," he said pleasantly, wondering if he should politely look at and welcome whoever came in or if it was better if he kept his eyes closed and seemed focused entirely on the music. The second was rude, but the first might scare this person, and that was tiring.

Oh? This was a surprise. "Hello, Dr. Itoh." What brought him here?

His hair was almost as grey as Kaworu's own by now, and being trapped on the moon for so long hadn't been good for him. He hadn't bothered to keep up the necessary weight-bearing exercise when he was certain he would never be allowed to see earth again.

He would have been dealt with already if Kaworu hadn't requested otherwise. The request had made the council curious enough to stay their hand, and since there had been no further trouble (due to despair more than fear, the belief that there was nothing he could do to fight the conspiracy), he was still around years later because of inertia and the worry that Kaworu would make things more difficult for any other intermediary, out of annoyance that his toy had been taken away or unhappiness with change, if nothing else.

"The committee will want to know why you were so curious about the head of NERV," Dr. Itoh said shortly and bluntly. He'd rather preempt that request by getting the information from Kaworu and giving it to his assistant, who they all knew was an informant, than have to deal with the group he'd once thought were trying to save the world.

"Why would I not be? His disobedience to the committee is well known. In addition to that, he ordered the creation of my opposite number," the host of Lilith, "and is the father of another of the pilots. I will most likely have to interact with him at some point, in accordance with the scenario." The proper, pious thing to say. "It's not as though my nature could have been kept secret from him. Not when our shared DNA gives me such a resemblance to Rei Ayanami."

"And that explains why you demonstrated that you could breathe in near-vacuum."

"Or I might have been using my AT field to keep oxygen trapped in the area around me," Kaworu reminded him, surprised he'd forgotten that. Although surely it had meant far more to him than this man.

Such stunning proof that his _self _was not valued at all. So like Shinji's own experience.

Shinji had gotten the impression that Dr. Itoh was already dead. Kaworu hadn't corrected him. Dr. Itoh had enough difficulty in his life without Shinji's anger as well, even if the two would likely never meet.

"You didn't take any out with you."

Kaworu looked surprised by the assumption Dr. Itoh was making. He should know that Kaworu could conceal matter. For instance, right now he had hundreds of antique records and cds tucked away, because he'd learned better than to let SEELE get their hands on the things he cared for.

There had only been ten recordings of one of the concerts he'd lost left, and all of the performers had died in Second Impact. If he'd needed any more proof that SEELE didn't care one bit for the legacy or accomplishments of the Lilim, that would have settled it once and for all.

The other angels could conceal enough LCL to become larger than skyscrapers, after all. Kaworu's collection was nothing as large as that.

Pity. He'd much rather have several tons of music than see one of the others transform into several tons of genocidal monster.

"You weren't projecting your AT field," Dr. Itoh said, answering the unspoken question. "And in this case, the method doesn't matter, it's the capability Dr. Ikari could have observed."

He'd checked? Why? Oh, of course Kaworu was used to SEELE gathering data on every breath he took, move he made and so on, but he'd thought Dr. Itoh no longer really cared about studying Kaworu.

"Does it matter?" Kaworu asked.

Dr. Itoh frowned. "I suppose not." He also supposed he'd tell that traitor to humanity to tell SEELE that their manmade angel had analyzed the risk and decided it was irrelevant instead of acting thoughtlessly.

It would also have been polite to ask if there was anything else, but that would have been an opening for Dr. Itoh to say, 'No,' and leave.

So, "What do you want?" was what Dr. Itoh asked next, recognizing the angel's use of deliberate silence, the kind that pulled words out of people if only in hopes that one of them would satisfy the creature and make it go away.

"I am Adam's vessel, but for now my soul is my own. You of all people should know how little difference there is between," no, not angels and humans, "what you are and what I am." Kaworu smiled even knowing that these were wasted words, because somehow the pain was sweet. Perhaps it was the hope that still lingered, even though he knew better. The power of a wish, even if he didn't have Shinji's glass heart, his ability to, no matter how times he was broken, melt the pieces in the furnace of his will and make it whole, enough to still beat, enough to try again. "So you know what I want, you simply don't believe it."

Hell no, he didn't. Neither: he didn't know what this creature wanted, nor did he believe it was companionship, much less _his _companionship. When what angels wanted was instrumentality, complementation, not meaningless human feelings like friendship and love.

"What do you want?" Kaworu wondered. Dr. Itoh might not know what it was, but if he truly wanted to leave he would have just walked out already, as he had many times before. "Other than my death. Even if I desired to end my individual existence before the appointed time for me to fulfill my role as Adam's vessel, we both know my AT field responds instantly to threats." So, given the limits of human reflexes, the only person who could kill him would be someone he _didn't _consider a threat.

Since he only had one friend at the moment, that meant only Shinji could kill him before Adam took him over. That wasn't a very pleasant thought. It wasn't possible for him to kill himself either, any more than Lilim could strangle themselves with their own bare hands.

Seriously? Seriously? This red-eyed demon asked him that? "Oh, I don't know. Just the things I've always wanted, the ones I came up here for in the first place. Humanity's survival, my freedom, _revenge for my family_." For second impact.

"Still asking for things like that." Kaworu sighed. "Perhaps I should have given up on you back then after all. Well, I'll take care of you now, one way or another," he said, and the two of them vanished.

When they reappeared, the doctor scrambled back, only to trip over a coffee table. Kaworu might have been hurt, except the point had been to sound convincing. Hopefully if Dr. Itoh believed him, SEELE would as well. "I can't give you the other two, although there is someone I believe in." Someone who could-Oh dear.

He knelt down next to the doctor, who was grasping at his chest. "Forgive the intrusion," he said, placing his hands on the man who had always avoided contact, one on his cheek and the other over his heart, the heart that had gone so long without the strain of pumping against full gravity.

Child's play, to reshape a single organism. Child's play almost literally: on his own world, they'd made sure to socialize him, so that he would like people, so that he would know why his purpose was to work for their behalf. So he knew how to deal with planetary children his own age (mental age-equivalent now), even though he'd never thought it safe to turn Shinji into a dragon or any of the other things children had clamored for back on his homeworld.

He did more than repair the heart, the atrophied muscles and the bones that had lost calcium in an environment where there was less need for it. "If I survive, I will put you back the way you were later, but for now this is safer." To hide with a different face when there were eyes in the sky. "This place is stocked with food, although there is no way to reach the outside world." Lest he try to warn the UN about Kaworu as well as SEELE, and die for it. "There is almost no chance SEELE knows it has any connection to me." Not when it was simple enough to tap into and manipulate the world's computer network. "It is unkind of me to put you here alone, but please bear with it. This will be over soon, and then you can resume your life." Hopefully.

Kaworu finally withdrew his hands and let the man speak. "What did you do to me?" he demanded to know, pushing himself away with his hands even though he was too shocked to stand up, or run.

"I have given you a chance to survive." Yes: after all this time, his heart was no better armored than Shinji's. "It's no more than I owe the man who gave me another body and another chance to act. You do know where they obtained this genetic sample, correct?" Since attempts to clone the embryo form of Adam had only yielded lifeless, twisted embryos that refused to grow beyond that stage. "The Traitor, who turned on his kin for the sake of the 'base, fallen' life of this world." Tabris' voice showed what he thought of that description of the Lilim, as twisted as this world had become. "Adam's is not the only soul in my body. I suppose it's reassuring that even you, who spent more time in my company than anyone else, had no idea."

Oh, yes. "Take your clothes off."

Seeing Dr. Itoh's startled expression, he told him, "I will need an explanation for disappearing with you instead of just killing you then and there. If I take your clothing and dip it in LCL, SEELE should be too happy to finally have proof that I can break through Lilim AT fields and absorb their personalities to ask many questions. That isn't something to have on the security cameras, after all." Someone dissolving into LCL. Even the true believers might have their doubts after watching what happened when an angel essentially _ate someone's soul_, or at least Kaworu certainly hoped so. "And if any of them actually do realize that I am fond of you, they'll assume I gave you the gift of complementation instead of sending you somewhere to continue you meaningless Lilim life."

Kaworu had managed to get out of practicing that before by saying that prisoners that were sent to him weren't worthy and true believers that volunteered should spend the remaining time working towards Instrumentality like everyone else instead of seeking a shortcut to divinity. He supposed he was lucky that he was kept sequestered on the Moonbase: it was much harder to smuggle people up there without questions being asked. He doubted he could have kept finding excuses forever if he was kept in a SEELE facility on earth, with easy access to lives that wouldn't be missed. For that matter, they could have tempted him with the dying, in which case he would have had a choice between absorbing them so they could continue to live just a little longer (long enough for this to be over, so he could make them new bodies) and revealing that he could heal. He had no intention of acting as the Council's Fountain of Youth.

He didn't like to wish anyone dead, but the sooner Kihl died, the better. There were many others to carry on his work, but Kihl was dangerously competent. Kaworu doubted that he could have deceived the man this long if the fact Kaworu simply didn't think like a planetary human wasn't throwing off Kihl's ability to read him. Or actually, he didn't doubt his ability to trick the man, he was certain he couldn't have done it.

The Lilim had raised both the art of deception and the art of detecting lies to a level beyond any other world, he was sure of it. On other worlds, the option of psychic communication meant that refusing to use it was tantamount to admitting that one was lying. When the Lilim sheltered behind their AT fields to escape the twisted thoughts of the other angels, however?

Dr. Itoh knew what Kaworu was talking about: the fact that SEELE wanted him to make sure his creation learned how to do something like _that, _not just encroach on human minds in order to read them but assimilate them and turn their bodies into the substance that had poisoned the oceans was what set him on the path to realizing their true nature. He still held his coat closed almost protectively.

"You want to keep your uniform?" Kaworu asked. "I would have thought that you'd be glad to finally be rid of it."

"_Modesty_," Dr. Itoh told him, remembered frustration temporarily overriding shock and fear.

"Oh, yes. I'm never going to understand that." It wasn't that Kaworu had an aversion to clothing, but at first he'd thought the reason everyone on the Moonbase was always dressed in clothing that wasn't art at all was because it had oxygen and other life support for emergencies built in. Everyone on Tethys had worn clothing all the time while he was there, and of course great care had been taken with his clothing, but that was both because it was an art form (and there was a degree of competition and status symbolism and such involved) and because the drag of it slowed them down, made it harder to move in the water. So it was rather like peacebinding a sword for a Tethyan to wear clothing, and since nine-tenths of politeness was proving that you didn't intend to attack? Wearing clothing while hunting, though, was a good way to go hungry.

Even after they'd worked out effective projectile weapons (working under methane made that more complicated than on Earth), combat had taken place in the buff (the slow got shot) until they managed to design body armor with a surface that was as effective at cutting through the water as their skin. Humans were only developing that sort of technology recently, for their Olympic competitions and EVA maintenance while submerged in LCL.

Then Kaworu had been an experiment, kept in a tank naked so they could examine him for deformities or obvious signs of inhumanity. That was almost like Tethys, except they'd talked around him instead of to him and there weren't any toys in the tank. That had puzzled him: clearly they'd intended him to do various things, so why weren't they trying to stimulate the development of what they thought was a new mind?

They still had all the clones they intended to use for dummy plug production in a tank like that, although at least it was a larger tank and they had company in there, even if the fact SEELE didn't want them to develop minds of their own explained the lack of enrichment toys. They were still naked.

Perhaps because for those who considered him a tool, naked was a dehumanizing state? And apparently to be nude meant to be pure in some fashion, too innocent to need clothing.

Well, in that case he might qualify: he didn't have a human sex drive, so he didn't react to the sight of reproductive organs either with interest or feeling threatened by a rival. Still, "Even you Lilim must admit that your rules are utterly inconsistent. You go out of your way to look at each other's organs all the time, but then you become awkward about doing so in person. Is it part of your fear of getting close to others?" Were they afraid that if they looked they would want to touch, when that would involve letting the other person touch back, letting them close? "The phobia about simple human contact you Lilim have isn't natural. Well, hopefully you'll have a healthier attitude once the other angels are defeated."

"Explaining sex and pornography to you was specifically not in my contract," Dr. Itoh informed him.

"Oh, I know about pornography." When he was monitoring the Moonbase's signal traffic. "There's nothing perverse about it: it's only natural to want to look at beautiful things. Why do you think I spend so much time looking at the earth? Just because I don't intend to take it from you doesn't mean that it isn't gorgeous." Even with its seas stained lifeless red.

Of course, the fact that such a large percentage of it was lifeless, that it needed an angel to take it in hand and fix the place up just really made it more tempting for a subspecies that was supposed to do just that. It was a pity that even if he survived this, it was going to take forever to shift Venus' orbit without any other angels to assist him, overpowered AT field or no.

The fact that it already had people, people that _needed help_, might have somehow made earth even more tempting if that thought wasn't utterly perverted and wrong. He _wasn't _like the others, he wasn't going to destroy everything the Lilim had built in order to reshape it.

No. Just no.

"It's not the same thing."

"It is, actually. Angels aren't what SEELE thinks we are." Hmm, should he? He knew what Shinji would say, and maybe a joke at a time like this might make Dr. Itoh less worried and more willing to listen. "Well, you see, when a species really, really doesn't want to go extinct…"


	5. Land on Their Feet

_My favorite Eva continuity is actually Campus Apocalypse, although the reason why is likely a reason it's not a proper continuity:_

_Everything makes sense. The author designed a set of rules for the world and backstories for the characters such that everything makes sense on first read-through if one pays the kind of attention one should in 'Magic A is Magic A' SF, or books like Diana Wynne Jones' where the focus of the story is the characters figuring out what's going on so they can do something about it. _

_Asuka manages to get a CMOH while still being Asuka. Meaning she does so by giving someone a verbal beatdown and calling them an idiot. Rei is freaking adorable. Kaworu is actually in character, desire to help Shinji combined with complete cluelessness about normal social interaction and all – it's hilarious. (He can be interpreted as having a crush, but for me that's a plus. Go, Rei! For the harem ending!) & Shinji was raised by Kaji. _

_Sadly, I really can't use anything from it for this fic, since it uses a different premise (alternate dimensions) so have another Rebuild-centered chapter, covering the end of the second movie. _

_It actually kind of bothers me how much of the End of Evangelion movie makes sense to me. I'm going, "That's an alchemic term, that's your standard medieval flagellant mysticism, that's something Celtic but I'd need to look it up to identify the symbol... Ok, that's completely effing insane." I think that if it all made sense to me, I would seriously have to worry about my sanity._

* * *

"_This… isn't good_," Shinji thought as he wrapped his arms around Rei. "_This is… very bad. But I don't know what else I could have done. I don't know what else I can do._" He couldn't push her away. Not when she was his little sister. Not when she'd nearly died, he'd nearly lost her before he could even figure out a way to tell her that he considered her family, much less actually help her.

If only Gendo had let him pilot earlier, if only it hadn't taken so long for Misato to get his Eva out of storage: he didn't understand. He'd thought Gendo at least cared about Rei. Had the bastard meant this to happen? Risked Rei's life for some part of his insane scenario?

Well, look at how he'd treated Yui's other legacy.

He'd beaten the angel that beat Rei and started eating the EVA. And now that felt like the easy part.

Rei was curled up against him, her hair pure white and her eyes a clear red, as though he was seeing into her bloodstream, into her heart. And she was so happy.

Their AT fields were melting together. He had to be the one to close her out: Rei didn't know _how_. But he couldn't. How could he, when she was so happy? How could he reject her and hurt her like that?

"Shinji?" she whispered instead of sending, not even realizing that the two of them were really spirit instead of body right now, that the light she emitted was the light of her soul.

"It's okay, Rei," Shinji said soothingly. Damn, he had to keep his knowledge that they were on the verge of causing Third Impact out of the part of his soul she was melting into. He couldn't worry her or make her think this was her fault.

It wasn't even the crazy la-his mother's fault, either. This was what he'd said, hadn't he? Forget everything else, he was going to save his little sister! If no one else cared for her, not even Gendo, then someone had to! Then he would be the one to rescue her! "It's going to be okay," he told her, even as he tried to calm down instead of either cursing at himself or at Gendo – how _dare _he make her think she was expendable? How could she be _surprised _that he'd come to rescue her, and damn the laws of physics? If her body had already been destroyed, there was plenty of LCL here: she could make herself a new one! This universe had been made by and for humanity, the light of the soul was the true power here, the power of the human mind and will. Nothing was impossible: Tabris had taught him that. The only power that could oppose a human was another human. He couldn't have rescued Rei if she hadn't reached back.

His little sister had trusted him, taken his hand, and now her soul was dissolving into his, ending her precious individual life, because he couldn't say no to her. And he was tired, but that wasn't an excuse. Not for failing his little sister when she needed him.

He'd lost his mother but he'd still had Tabris, his friend and teacher. He'd wanted to be that person for her, because it wasn't fair that she didn't have anyone to stand up for her. To tell her that of course she had the power to stand up on her own. To be there when something happened despite all her strength, and she needed someone to help her.

Oh, right. It was disgusting how weak he was sometimes, how much he let Gendo's abandonment affect him. Even though he knew better. "It's really going to be okay," he told her now, and finally believed it.

Rei wasn't the only child abandoned by Gendo that had someone watching their back, Shinji knew, and smiled as the weapon he'd wielded in dreams ran them both through.

Instantly the shock and fear of attack made Rei close herself off, but that was alright. Well, his little sister getting scared wasn't alright, Shinji thought as he looked up with clouded eyes, but they'd mixed around the edges. So she'd take away the important things, the things he wanted her to know. That was, that was good.

"_Hey, Tabris. You're late," _he managed to joke, even as he sent Tabris his thanks and relief because he didn't have words.

"_Sorry, SEELE wouldn't have understood me unilaterally launching unit 06 just to save the two of you. And I knew you'd hold out long enough." _The lesser lance Tabris had called on dispersed, freeing their cores now that the fusion had been halted_. "She was counting on you, after all." _

Shinji blinked, looking down at himself, past the outline of light that was the edge of his skin._ "I have a core like that?" _

"_Of course you do-Ah. A core isn't an S2 engine: we angels can just use the AT field generated by our cores to create and enclose a pocket dimension where the waveform is such that it constantly generates energy_." Instead of being bound by the conservation of matter and energy. "_Your cores do something very similar, so of course they look the same in a place like this, where the division between mind and body is overruled_. _She was inside your AT field, but your cores weren't in danger of merging for several more hours_. _Not when both of you knew that to become one would mean to no longer have the other_." Not when Shinji wanted a little sister and now Rei understood what it meant to have a big brother. "_I'm sorry you were worried because I didn't manage to explain this well enough." _It was a little difficult for him to show Shinji what his own soul actually looked like when it wasn't possible to form anything like a mirror, on top of the difficulty inherent in looking at Shinji's soul from inside Shinji's soul.

"_I should have known you'd have my back." _

"_Shinji…" _Of course Tabris wasn't hurt that Shinji hadn't thought of him. "_You lost your mother and your father abandoned you. I'm not going to blame you for surviving." _When the two people who should have stayed even if everyone else abandoned him were the first to go, of course he had a hard time trusting others. "_Could you ask Rei to let me show her how to make a body_?" he asked, changing the subject. "_NERV has already hailed me, and I'm sure Misato is worried about you." _

"_Next time Rei puts herself in danger, I want her to know that she'll succeed no matter what, because if she can't do it alone I'll lend her my strength." _So she'd never have to feel failure. "_And I should have gone out there knowing that I could focus on Rei because I could count on you to take up the slack." _

The light that was Rei's soul, the image she had of herself was already reaching towards them, worry for Shinji and the desire to be reunited with her new brother warring with a more protective concern. Who was this person who had taken Shinji away from her?

"_It's fine," _Shinji told her. "_This is my teacher. You know how you tried to tell me I couldn't rescue you just because you didn't have a physical existence anymore?"_ Shinji thought that was how she'd put it, but he'd been a little distracted at the time. "_Come here, and then we can go home_." Not that Rei's empty apartment was a proper home, but he was going to do something about that now that he didn't have to worry about Rei telling Gendo about Tabris.

She took his hand, and then the other that reached out to her.

"_Alright. You can use the LCL in my entry plug." _Kaworu had already primed it, since getting here from the moon without just using hyperspace in front of every eye in the sky humanity had had taken too damn long. "_This way," _he said, and pulled.

When Shinji opened his eyes again, he was floating in LCL with Rei's foot in his face.

"Shinji, clothing!" Tabris reminded him, then paused, embarrassed. Normally he was the one people yelled at about this. "Well, really, it would be more realistic if you didn't have enough control to impose your clothing as well as your vessels on the LCL, but I thought it might be better this way." He was hoping they would cuddle, since the way Rei's AT field reacted to Shinji in the first place showed that she really needed to feel more connected to other humans.

"No, this is good, thanks for showing Rei how to do that," Shinji said quickly, blushing and hoping that Rei hadn't seen anything.

"Thank you," Rei said quietly.

"You're Shinji's family," Kaworu told her with a welcoming smile. "Is there anything else before I contact NERV?" he asked Shinji, who was more likely to think of these things.

"You look as much like her brother as I do," Shinji pointed out. "But I think we're fine."

Shinji wasn't sure whether his hand found Rei's or hers found his. He hoped the answer was both.

"This is Kaworu Nagisa, the Fifth Child, pilot of EVA 06 assigned to SEELE Moonbase. Sorry for taking so long to respond to your hails, but I had a few things I needed to focus on." First preventing Third Impact, and now the two people leaning over the back of his chair. "I could power down now for debriefing, but could you please direct me to an EVA hanger as soon as possible? I understand that severely damaged units come first, but this was the first combat test of Unit 06 outside simulation." So it would almost certainly need adjustments and SEELE's engineers would want data after such a rough maiden voyage.

Misato stared at the faces on the laptop's screen. Not just because Shinji and Rei were alive, but even though that was the most important thing, this boy… Did he just look familiar because he and Rei had to be related somehow?

She, Ritsuko and the others had come outside to watch the end of the world, Misato in the hope that if she got closer, if she saw for herself there would be something she could do. She hated feeling so powerless. "This is Captain Misato of NERV Japan. Thanks for the assist. Please head towards the main building and drop off our pilots first, while I figure out what we're going to do with your EVA." Misato thought the best idea might be to get it into a hanger first thing, actually. Just for starters, they couldn't move the other three into hangers until they managed to get some cranes and flatbed trucks down here. 06 might be in and out before any of the other EVAs could get to the hanger, especially with all the repair crews on standby.

Eager to look over SEELE's new toy. 02 might be the first production model, but Misato had heard rumors, and not just from Kaji, that SEELE was already working on the second generation of EVAs. The moonbase would be the best place for something like that: the isolation meant it would be hard for certain countries to infiltrate the place and send information back to their militaries.

EVA becoming a weapon of war was inevitable, after the world had seen how nothing could stop an AT field except another AT field. That didn't mean it wasn't worthwhile to try to prevent weapons made to kill angels and protect humanity from being used to attack humans.

It seemed as though the pilot's smile became just for her when he heard that her pilots were her first priority instead of baggage associated with their war machines. "Acknowledged." The Eva started to walk towards them with what Misato knew was unusual control for such a massive, clumsy machine as an Eva.

"Either they've improved the balance systems a lot or he's got a high sync ratio," she said to Ritsuko.

"Hmm," was all Ritsuko said, and Misato looked at her with puzzlement. Ritsuko could talk technobabble in the face of Third Impact, and now was when she clammed up and got thoughtful? It didn't seem as though she was in R&D mode, trying to take Unit 06 apart with her eyes to figure out how it worked either.

"Hmm?" Misato questioned her.

"It might be practice. The moon's gravity combined with an EVA's momentum would require much more precise control," was what Ritsuko said, but the quick glance at the laptop gave her away.

In hindsight, Misato would curse herself for ignoring all the obvious signs that something was up. Years of them. But she'd had her orders, and her mission, and her pilots to look after.


	6. Childcat

It was very different to see Shinji's school from this height. He'd spoken eye-to-eye with Shinji before, turning the cat form into another human form to play with him, but Tabris had never dared to take the form of Kaworu in Tokyo-3. He'd never visited Shinji's old schools in human form, either, no matter how many times he'd gone there in the form of a cat.

This place and these people felt both very familiar, since they were something he'd seen every day for weeks now, and not. He hoped habit wouldn't betray him. For instance, he shouldn't go over to hug Hikari hello, nor would she pick him up if he did so. Nor were Touji and Suzuhara likely to feed him the vegetables they didn't want unless he found some justification for asking for them.

Perhaps he was more on edge because everything had gone so well so far. Misato had insisted on taking him into her Home For Wayward Pilots without either him or Shinji needing to figure out a way to ask, much less arrange anything. She hadn't even consulted Shinji, just said that of course he would be willing to share his room, right? He barely had anything in it, and Kaworu hadn't brought any personal possessions with him either. It wasn't as though he kept a packed suitcase with a toothbrush inside his Eva, and he'd launched himself down to earth in the middle of a battle.

So it was probably the most convenient option Misato had to have him over for the night and pick up necessary supplies on the way home, instead of having to assign him someone else as a minder and personal shopper.

Then SEELE decided that since he was down here, he might as well stay down here, in case another angel attacked while his EVA was being shipped back up to the moon. Repeatedly sending it up would be very wasteful of time, fuel and money.

Obedient as he was… most of the time, Kaworu Nagisa and his EVA stayed where they were put. It took a couple of days for him to acquire enough clothing and other supplies for an extended stay, and then to ask if he should accompany the other pilots to where they went all day. It turned out Misato had already filed all the paperwork, since even though Kaworu's (home-schooled) level of education was equivalent to Asuka's, the Captain hadn't gotten to where she was today by turning down free babysitting. Also, if she hadn't sent him, Asuka would have pointed out that she was also absurdly overqualified for the place.

"Do you always gawk like that?" Asuka demanded as he paused in the school's entryway.

"No, not at home, but I've never been inside a school like this before." There were no records of Kaworu Nagisa riding on any of the shuttles to the moonbase. There were no records of Kaworu Nagisa at all, bar a clean bill of health, testimony that he was well-educated and so on.

"This is the first time he's been around people his own age before," Shinji reminded them, even though he knew Tabris was much older than that.

"Well, stop acting like a tourist! It's embarrassing!" Asuka demanded. What if they judged her by this space cadet?

"I will do my best," Kaworu said truthfully. He didn't try to apologize to stave off her wrath because he'd already seen that was worse than useless with Asuka. Her drive to prove herself made her try to aggressively prove herself to others, seeking acknowledgement and companionship. Yet the warped standards of behavior she tried to live up to were therefore the ones she judged others by, so she could only respect someone who either fought or demonstrated that they had the confidence to think it was cute.

Kaworu wasn't going to act like Mr. Kaji. For one thing, he didn't think he could. Still, since trying to placate Asuka would do no good, it was best not to play along and instead act oddly yet confidently enough that she would instead try to figure him out. Hopefully that would make her realize that not everyone was like her, and even she didn't need to be the way she acted in order to be appreciated and loved.

She was standoffish with Tabby when others were present, ('What kind of name is that? He's not even a tabby!'), but she'd kidnapped him to her room enough times that he knew she was a much kinder person under the façade than she pretended to be. The trouble was that it was her desire to love and be loved in return that made her so aggressive, since it was the only way she knew to get approval.

Again, it was a pity that he couldn't give her a hug in human form. He would sleep in her bed tonight, he decided. He knew she felt touched when Tabby chose her over Stupid Shinji.

They had arrived at school a little early and led him to the office where he did a little final paperwork and was introduced to their teacher while the others waited outside. This school was used to students transferring in and out, since its true purpose was to evaluate EVA pilot candidates, according to the report he'd received from SEELE after Misato registered him here. The report warned him that he would be under observation while there, but he had replied that it would be, essentially, as good a way as any to waste time until the appointed day came.

"Kaworu Nagisa?" the teacher asked.

"Yes," he answered. The man had been sent his photo, yes? How many grey-haired, red-eyed children were there in Tokyo-3? His hair was too dark for him to be an albino, although the light of his AT field shining through the thin strands made it appear white when he wanted to make it obvious that he was calling on his power.

The Lilim looked around the room nervously, but all the other teachers left when Kaworu came in. Kaworu doubted this was a coincidence: it would be known that he was the pilot of the Eva that descended on the city a few days ago, and that meant he and the teacher would be discussing classified information. "Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you. Anything at all."

Hmm? This couldn't be simply because he was a pilot: Shinji certainly hadn't received this sort of almost-fawning respect. Ah. Of course. This explained how often their teacher dwelled on the concept that the good days were over, that the world would never recover from Second Impact, which implied that these children didn't really have any future. Odd behavior for someone supposed to groom them to fight for this world. Not odd at all for an agent of SEELE. "Simply treat me as you would any other student," he told the Lilim. "I wish to experience their isolation alongside them, and ease their pain as much as I can with words alone."

The man practically swooned from the combination of those words and a pitying smile: he didn't know that he was the one Kaworu pitied. How many of this type had Kaworu met, these people finding any excuse they could to justify the visit the moonbase to pay homage to a true angel? To the vessel of Adam, to the hope of complementation. Proof of mankind's eventual perfection and immortality.

Savior and destroyer, who would save them by destroying this corrupt and ruined world.

Shinji had noted once that Kaworu probably got more attention than Adam's embryo and the captured third angel because Kaworu was handsome, verging on pretty. Shinji was more right than he knew, even though Shinji was too used to Kaworu to realize how creepy he and Rei could look to others. There was no more chance involved in how he looked than how Rei did: Rei was Yui's ghost and Kaworu was SEELE's holy child. Lorenz had put such a pretty face on humanity's doom.

The worship directed at him was worship of _death_, the death of worlds. The polar opposite of what he had truly been created for, of the reason his kind existed. It made him sick, it made him pity them to see such madness, and he didn't know what else to do but be kind. He didn't have the skill with words to get through to a fanatic, he didn't know how to help these people. All he could think to do was be kind, all he could do was tell them to live, to believe in their promised day if that was the only thing that could make them happy, that might keep them from seeking death. Even though they were working for the end of the world, it wasn't their fault: it was his, for assuming that the others would be harmless in stasis, for not going to another planet a safe distance away. His pity for how their world had suffered came across as pity for a Lilim's tainted existence all too easily. His hope that this world could still have a bright future came across as a desire to give them Instrumentality.

Which played right into Lorenz's hands, of course, but sadly that was for the best. If Lorenz thought he was also a true believer? And why wouldn't he be? When supposedly Adam's mind had been influencing him since birth, when he had identified himself as an angel instead of a Lilim since the beginning, never rebelled against his purpose in any way Lorenz knew of (he hoped)?

If he hadn't had Shinji's company, if he hadn't known that there was something he could do, someone he could help? If he'd been trapped there with nothing but such madness, would he have been infected by it? Would he just want it to _stop? _He was no killer, he held to that, but if he had no options other than to kill a world or die himself would he come to prefer his own death and finally to long for it as an escape from the pain of knowing how terribly he had failed?

Though no one else noticed anything when Kaworu came into the classroom, Shinji gave him a puzzled look: what was wrong? Kaworu still didn't know how Shinji could tell no matter what form Kaworu was in, but it was actually pretty simple: usually Kaworu, Tabby or not, leaned towards others, was focused on them and willing to be close, unlike most people who stayed away out of fear of being hurt. When Kaworu was withdrawn, that meant he wanted to keep something to himself, didn't want to bother Shinji with it.

Kaworu knew it was foolish of him to think that he'd left this behind with the moon. Of course SEELE would still be watching him. Even if they didn't suspect him, he was still important to them.

As much as the true believers, as opposed to those who were only involved in this because they feared death or craved divinity, horrified him, he also worried about them. They were symptoms, were they not, of what this world had endured? They weren't innocents, not when they aided and abetted SEELE's crimes, but they were the victims of Lorenz and those like him, just like everyone that had died in Second Impact. They were being betrayed by their leaders, those they trusted.

"Class, we have another transfer student joining us today. Kaworu Nagisa, please come forward and introduce yourself."

And he was plotting to betray their hopes in turn.

"Hello," he said, and smiled. "My name is Kaworu Nagisa. I was trained as a pilot on the moonbase for rapid deployment, but since almost all the angel attacks have occurred here, I've been stationed in Tokyo-3 as of a few days ago. I look forward to getting to know you," even though I already do, "and I hope you'll be patient with me, since this is my first time attending a school."

"Thank you, Mr. Nagisa. Please take your seat," the teacher said, and he did.

Farther from Shinji than he would have liked, but he knew these people as well, or at least Tabby did.

* * *

_Kaworu's serenity and cheer in ep. 24 has a couple simple explanations if you know psychology: if a depressed person suddenly becomes cheerful and seems to get a whole lot better, that's often a sign they've decided to commit suicide. When one is living under the weight of constant pain and misery, the thought of finally being free of it can be a tremendous relief, and Kaworu does talk about death as the only way he can be free (although he's talking about free from the destiny to destroy humanity). Either way, when someone who knows they don't have long to live one way or another acts that serene, that can mean they've accepted death to the point they're looking forward to it, if only to no longer be living in dread of it. Since the writer of the series was dealing with depression at the time, it's not surprising that the happiest character in there would be the one who has a more than good enough reason to die. So it's interesting that Kaworu and Rei end up representing the two reasons Shinji has to reject instrumentality and return to life, despite the fact that life is pain._


	7. The Otaku are Bonding

_At this point I think I've done enough of these that the original chapter title scheme has stopped being funny._

* * *

"I didn't know Kensuke knew anything about music," said Shinji, opening his bag of bento on the grass next to Hikari's, the two of them quickly conducting the usual round of trades.

"War movie soundtracks," Touji said, looking around. "Hey, where's your cat?"

The pilot shrugged. "Around. He's never been a house cat: sometimes I think being indoors so much bothers him. He didn't follow me to school, so he must be exploring."

"You sure that's safe? I guess it was where you're from, but this is the big city."

"I talked to animal control, and he knows about cars."

"I guess." They'd had this conversation before, but it still worried Touji a little. What was he supposed to tell his sister if the kitty was run over or stepped on by an angel or caught in the gears when a building went down or something? "Damn, though, guess I'll have to eat my own radishes." He didn't like them, but he wasn't going to waste food, not when things had been so tight for years after Second Impact.

"Kaworu's a vegetarian and so's Rei, so give 'em here," Shinji said, opening two boxes and taking Touji's to divide the offending food between the two of them.

"Rei's contributing now?" Hikari asked, a little surprised. Asuka was her friend and Shinji's fellow pilot, so the two of them would have brought lunches for her even if she hadn't insisted on pulling her weight by treating them to lunch on Sundays and giving Hikari entirely too much money for ingredients.

"After the last battle…" Shinji bit his lip and the others looked at each other. Shinji didn't want to talk about it and Rei didn't talk much, but they'd already guess that Rei had nearly died. "And I think we may be related. She looks a lot like my mother. We're not sure because Rei and my mother both had their backgrounds wiped for safety's sake, but that just makes it more likely, doesn't it?"

Touji and Hikari looked at each other again, then to where Kensuke was animatedly talking to Nagisa, who was nodding with what seemed like genuine interest instead of feeling put-upon. Kensuke had monopolized Nagisa since the beginning of lunch because _moonbase_ that was host to the latest angel-fighting secret technology developments: Nagisa was lucky he'd somehow asked questions on topics which came up in Kensuke's excited half-questions half-telling-Kaworu-about-his-own-'hometown' that eventually led Kensuke to talk about something Nagisa was actually interested in hearing about. Then they looked back at Shinji.

"I don't know, man," Touji said finally. "Maybe if the two of you are cousins or something," if there was a resemblance, it was hard to see, "She's Nagisa's sister? The two of them look enough like each other to be twins." Fraternal, but since they were a girl and a boy that was obvious.

Shinji nodded. "They could be. They have the same birthday."

"He didn't know?" Touji asked, frowning. He could see Rei not even mentioning that she'd ever had a brother, but Kaworu seemed pretty normal – by comparison to Rei, anyway – so he'd have told Shinji right away even if they weren't allowed to meet before, right?

Shinji shook his head. "He's been up on the moon and training his entire life. He needs almost as many pills as Rei does because the isolation means his immune system isn't developed enough. Section Two came by in the middle of the night the first night he was here, woke Misato up carrying these boxes in, since they couldn't let him miss a dose right after coming down to earth _and _an EVA fight." Kaworu still had more drawers stuffed with pill bottles than with clothes. "Asuka asked if he had AIDS or something, because some of the medicines are the same." A lot of them were post-organ transplant medications, too.

Shinji had been shocked and worried: Kaworu hadn't told Shinji he might get sick _why_? Kaworu had assured him that there wasn't any real danger because of his AT field, and that was when Shinji had found out that _Rei_, on the other hand, did have to worry.

Although her cover story was organ transplants, after the EVA battles, the real problem both their bodies had was that neither NERV nor SEELE had exactly known what they were doing when they translated angel DNA into normal matter, earth-type biochemistry, then mixed those genes with enough Terran genes to get something that looked like this world's human. Both groups of scientists had given up on solving the pigment issue.

Then there was the problem of that mixed genome being inserted into Terran cells with Terran epigenetics. In the end, they actually _had _failed to produce anything viable. The compatibility problems involved in mixing Lilith's Noxian or Tabris' Tethyan DNA with Terran would have been more than enough to keep producing hybrids from being anything as simple as 'plug and play' even without the differences between angels and terrestrial humans.

Rei was only alive because what was left of Lilith had designed these genes and bodies in the first place, and buried memory knew how to operate them 'manually' and automatically with her AT field. Tabris had just analyzed the local biologic and learned how to do the same thing.

The EVAs were orders of magnitude easier to make because one of the things pure angel DNA was designed for was being easy to work with, since a planet's inhabitants usually discovered their angel when their technology had advanced to around that point anyway. It wasn't quite to the point of having a built-in-tutorial, but if a planet couldn't figure out how to make living spaceships first capable of lifting stuff into orbit for them and then settling more stars with a set of blueprints designed to be easy to read right in front of them, they probably needed to wait a few decades before making beings that powerful anyway, because while humanity had dozens of universes' worth of experience making angel biotech idiotproof, sometimes stuff still happened.

Like, oh, Shinji's own planet.

Still, while space was prettymuch space, planets had a lot of variety in their environments, so there were a lot of different adaptations to those environments. In all the history Kaworu had, no terrestrial species had moved onto someone else's planet, not in large numbers. Planets had things like weather that would erode domes and plants that would crack them open: if you were building habitats because your planet had gotten too old to support life, it was better to just build spaceships that could move on to the next star to begin with.

And if a planet became uninhabitable while its people weren't at that tech level yet…

As cool as it would be to be able to fly, Shinji didn't want to die. Instrumentality meant that everyone would become one, and that meant that there wouldn't be a Shinji anymore, or a Kaworu, or a Rei. Misato, Asuka: their memories would be in the whole, but they wouldn't be themselves anymore. Just like how if something made their sun go nova (and it could happen, if one of the angels had gone crazy enough) and the desire to live made everyone who still had their original instincts intact even with their AT fields shut start turning into angels, they wouldn't be themselves anymore.

Kaworu was, well, Kaworu. So Shinji hadn't really taken him seriously when he said that no, if Shinji got cool powers (well, cooler), he wouldn't be Shinji anymore. Kaworu was a pretty normal person, or so Shinji thought when Kaworu was the person Shinji knew best and _all _the adults Shinji knew were some degree of crazy.

The other angels were pretty inhuman, but they were _definitely _crazy, and even so had almost seemed within normal post-Second-Impact limits compared to the crazy lady in his Eva. They'd been trying to kill him but they hadn't been clawing at his mind, he hadn't actually _felt _that madness.

It was Rei, and the strange mix-up of angel feelings and lilim-type-human feelings inside her that made him realize how big the gap was. Psychologically, she wasn't quite one or the other, and with Yui and Lilith both trying to influence her (forget Gendo), her mind had been tugged in two incompatible directions all her life.

Tabris assessment was that she was _not _capable of a hyperspace scouting voyage, not one of any length, but she might be more suited to developing another world in this system, one whose species would have a grandparent-race to interact with from the beginning, than having lilim-human relationships.

"Is there anything we should watch out for?" Hikari asked him, worried for their new classmate. "Does he have any food allergies?"

Shinji shook his head. "The only thing he can't eat is meat, like Rei. And Misato showed me how to use antihistamine shots if he has a bad reaction to something. Asuka already knew how. Rei's been fine for years, so if they really are twins and have the same condition, he should be fine."

"So that's more evidence, isn't it? If they have to take the same stuff," Touji realized. "Huh," he said, looking at Kaworu. "Maybe pilot potential runs in families?" So Shinji got it from his mom, not his dad, and so had his cousins?

Hikari didn't quite sigh when Asuka intruded into Kaworu and Kensuke's conversation, loudly disagreeing with Kaworu on the merits of a German composer.

"Huh, she's pulling his pigtails now," Touji said. "Guess you've got some competition, Shinji."

"Pulling his…" That had been Tabris' assessment this whole time, but it made Shinji blink to hear it from someone who wasn't somewhere between Shinji's best friend and godfather and wasn't biased in Shinji's favor, thinking that of _course _the brilliant foreign genius would be willing to settle for an ordinary country boy like Shinji.

Since Kaworu hadn't been listening into their conversation, he thought Shinji's mental sending of what amounted to, "_Wha_?" was actually about the conversation Kaworu was having.

He told Shinji, _"It's fascinating, isn't it?" _So no wonder Asuka was so passionate in the defense of someone she hadn't studied, just heard a few pieces from. "_I doubt any planet in all of human history has developed music to the extent you have. Oh, every species needs a method of communication that isn't psychic, because it's impossible to keep from sending one's emotions along with the words because the words and thoughts are made of those feelings about the universe and the other person, but because of this it's the best way to communicate emotions." _Obviously_. "Yet with that closed to you, your ancestors looked for other ways to make the person they tried to communicate with _feel _the emotion they were trying to get across, and developed this form of communication using the reactions of your brains to harmonizing frequencies. Using this to communicate so many things from transcendent joy to the madness and horror of indiscriminate death, to the rebirth of the world after winter or tragedy…" _

Part of Shinji's patience with Kensuke's otakudom was that Kaworu was such, such an otaku, so Shinji was used to dealing with the enthusiasm of someone who thought music was _the best thing ever_ and couldn't understand why anyone else wouldn't find equal joy in it once its wonders were explained to them.

Shinji liked music himself, and not just listening to it. He found playing instruments a wonderful way to think about things and Kaworu was right: it did sort of fill the hole left by not being able to talk to other people 'properly,' not being able to get his feelings across to his aunt and uncle and let them know that they weren't alone in their pain. They could hear things in the sound of his cello that he'd never managed to say to them in words. Still, to him it was beautiful, but there were lots of beautiful art forms. It also was only a fraction as good at communicating as actual psychic communication was, so in that department he saw it as some utterly inadequate, grasping at straws substitute instead of a miracle of human determination to overcome the odds and reclaim their birthright, reach out to each other to join together and build this world the way Tabris did.

Maybe Kensuke's passion about the tools of warfare and Tabris' love of music were the same thing, at root. Kensuke had grown up after Second Impact, during the wars over resources that had led to the UN's authority over the world. Weapons were what defended people, tools that could be used to save the world from angels and other evils. By preparing for war, by fighting they could have peace, and hopefully sanity.

While music, one of the things humanity used to fight its life sentence to solitary confinement inside their own skulls, showed Tabris that they _were _still fighting, still reaching out to each other despite all the fear. That the human spirit wasn't broken, that no matter times human hearts were they could pick them back up again, piece them together, and turn that pain into something beautiful.

Because of Evas, humanity would survive the angels.

Because of music, there was proof humanity could still move past what the angels did to them?

Did all of this boil down to the love of life, wanting this world to live, or was Shinji overthinking it? Or thinking too much like Kaworu, who was made to think in those terms. He might have hit on _Kaworu's _subconscious reasoning, but Kensuke's might just be that guns went boom and Misato kicked ass.


	8. Dreamcat

"Alright," Shinji said, sitting cross-legged with her on her bed, holding her hands. "Any questions?"

"Yes: Why will we be doing this in your mind?" Wasn't that dangerous?

"Well, it wouldn't be safe to do this in your dreams or the real world, because you aren't trained yet and don't know how not to hurt yourself by accident," Shinji said reasonably. "And Kaworu is an angel: he can't protect himself the way I can. He could get hurt by accident." Even though Rei wouldn't be trying to hurt him, it was dangerous to be inside someone's mind if they didn't have any shields. "But I can control my AT field inside my mind the way angels can control theirs, like generating special fields and special dimensional areas. So I can maintain a place inside my mind where no matter what, no one will get hurt." Defending his precious people with the light of his soul.

Rei tilted her head to the side. "Then why did…"

Shinji looked embarrassed. "Because you were hurt, and scared, and thought you were alone. I knew I should have walled you out, or only shared part of my soul with you, but I was so worried about you that I just couldn't. Don't think it was your fault," he warned her. "I'm just nervous. About family." After losing his mother and being reunited with a madwoman, after his father abandoned him. "I was worried so much about messing up and hurting you that I really messed up. I won't do that again. Promise." Well, he wouldn't make that specific mistake, anyway. He'd probably make a lot more, because he hadn't had a little sister before and it really did make him nervous.

"Alright," Rei echoed him. She trusted him, after they'd shared part of their souls.

"Al-Well, so, close your eyes. I'll start pulling at you, the way Kaworu did to show us where we could get bodies again. Let me know when you feel it."

"I feel it." Felt him.

"Then, if you're ready," and not scared. "Let's go."

Rei found herself in a field of tall grass surrounded by woods and hills, no sign of human habitation but the ruins of a house. For someone who had spent all their time inside either a research lab or the environs of Tokyo-3, it was a very strange thing.

Although the two of them were standing here, Shinji still held both her hands as she looked around, spotting Kaworu-Tabris napping in the grass as casually in human form as in cat form. Even though, from what she understood of Shinji's explanation of how this worked, it would be very easy for Shinji to crush him in here, angels as helpless as humans were in the outside world.

That itself helped her calm. Yes, this was Shinji, and Shinji clearly wasn't like either of the Dr. Akagis, or anyone else that had worked on her or trained her. She'd _felt _Shinji, and if someone could be so unafraid when they were in Shinji's power, Rei certainly didn't have to be afraid either.

Not of her brother.

When she let go of his hands, showing that she didn't need to hang on for dear life, Shinji smiled at her and then said, "Hey, Kaworu."

The other boy who looked like her stretched, then opened his eyes. "Hello, Rei."

"Thank you for having me as your student, Nagisa-sensei."

Both of them blinked at her. "It's fine, really," the angel told her. "And Kaworu and Tabris: anything's fine. Kaworu I made up from part of my serial number – KWR. This body was made just like yours, except by SEELE." So they weren't very different at all, even though he was older than her. "You're Shinji's sister, and Shinji is…" He looked like he was considering how to explain this. "Angels exist for the purpose of blessing worlds with life, creating new races of humanity and protecting them so that they can create the future. I don't have a world or a race of my own yet, but Shinji has let me teach him and support him. As his family, his kin, that also makes you someone that I very much want to protect. If you let me, then I am the one who will have to thank you," Kaworu said, glancing at Shinji and then at her fondly.

Someone who wanted to protect her. The way Gendo had, even though he hurt himself and broke his glasses. The way Shinji had. "I would have to be a fool to refuse." People who valued her were important things. Even though she'd known Gendo considered her expendable, only a tool to reach Yui, she had still clung to him because he was the only one she had. Then she had met Shinji. Now she could have two people who cared about her. The thought made her feel something in her stomach, something like guilt that she was being greedy, except not. It made her remember the way Misato had looked at a box of cupcakes at a staff meeting, after all the others had looked at them longingly and then known that really, they mustn't. Misato had grabbed the entire box and sat back smugly. When Ritsuko gave her a look Misato had just grinned, because Misato ran several miles a day and worked out. Normally, anyone who drank as much beer as Misato would be roughly spherical, according to Ritsuko's grumblings, but Misato _earned _her indulgences, and damn well knew it.

"_I can have something other people don't, that other people would envy. But it's not bad of me to have them. I deserve them, just for being me_," Rei realized, and it strangely made the ache in her stomach intensify. Her eyes felt dry. "There isn't anything else you want?"

"What do you mean?" Shinji asked, looking a little worried for her.

"Well, Gendo Ikari looked after me because he wanted Yui. But all you want in exchange for looking after me is to look after me?"

The two of them looked at each other, clearly wondering if the other knew what to say to something that surely wasn't just a rhetorical question, or how to react to this. It was Shinji who realized what Rei was taking about: he remembered being abandoned because he didn't have what Gendo wanted, even though he'd relearned that it was possible to just be wanted for himself. "Well, it would be nice if we could spend some time together," Shinji told her. "But, I mean, if what I want is a little sister, then it doesn't feel like being a big brother is a _cost_." More like the entire point.

"Humans, no matter what kind they are, need other people," Kaworu said. "So the trade of 'I will be with you, if you will be with me' is one that concerns a very valuable thing, but it's one that is shared."

Rei nodded, and looked at Shinji. "You piloted the Eva for me." The first day he came, the first time he saw her.

Seeing how the brother and sister were turned towards each other, yearning to confirm the tie of blood that had been twisted by their mother's loss and father's obsession, wishing to know that this was real, that such ties could exist without taint, Kaworu asked, "Should I leave you two alone?" See, this was why he'd thought that they should rest together in his Eva the way they had as twin souls, only without the whole nearly destroying the world for the sake of each other part. At least they'd held hands, but Kaworu found himself wondering if the lack of psychic contact among Lilim didn't just deny them knowledge of each other but also knowledge of themselves. Perhaps without seeing these urges in others, they didn't know they were normal? And when all other Lilim were afraid to reach out to others, it must give the children the idea that wishing for human contact was strange, perhaps even wrong.

Shinji groaned and the moment was lost. "Kaworu, that was another euphemism."

"_Another _one?" Of course he knew that planetary humans were obsessed with sex: that was only proper, since sex was both how they created life and a ritual in celebration of life. Every language he'd been loaded with contained plenty of poetic terms for the act, so it was only natural that the Lilim would have phrases that alluded to sex other than the pedestrian. What was strange about the Lilim was how indirectly they alluded to it, since they were ashamed of it. All sorts of innocent phrases, or simple expressions of concern and care, were either code phrases to avoid mentioning sex or it was assumed that it would only be said if sex was involved, since no other drive was strong enough to make someone admit that they loved someone, for example.

"Oh, like the people who made you were any better. You only like that poem because it was comparing sex to geology." Not volcanoes but undersea magma vents, doors that let one past the surface to feel the heat of the planet's heart: that warmth was what nurtured all life on Tethys, but to dive into one was certain death. And yet, for the sake of love, who would not court a death and rebirth of such glorious ecstasy? Shinji groaned. "I _never _should have asked you for the talk." He wasn't going to ask his uncle, and it wouldn't be embarrassing for Kaworu to do it because Kaworu didn't give a damn about it, right? Wrong.

"Well, I am sorry, but I did tell you that I was an angel, and what angels were made for," Kaworu reminded him. "Of course I want you to have children."

Hmm? Rei looked up. Children?

Babies?

"He's trying to set me up with Asuka. I blame whoever gave him the talk and read him that poem."

"Don't talk about two of your grandparents that way," Kaworu scolded, then lost his straight face and rolled over, laughing. "Seriously, though," he told Rei, bits of grass and clover stuck in his silver hair, "She's very intelligent and she's definitely courting him."

Shinji's jaw dropped, betrayed. "Don't recruit my sister!"

"Courting him?" Rei asked, intrigued. Shinji plus sex equaled babies equaled more family, most likely family like Shinji instead of like Gendo. The thought made her feel shy and greedy, as though she was asking too much, yet part of her was asking, why not? Why not be greedy? Why not arrange for more family? Imagine if everyone in Tokyo-3 was family. And more, and more and _babies. World full of babies_. _Allmine_.

Maybe even Shinji-babies, although she wasn't sure about what the Asuka component might do to the offspring.

"Watch her AT field: I'll have to show you how to do that," Kaworu remembered. "She keeps projecting into his space, not just with it but with physical possessions and her own body as well." Kaworu was certain that meant a lot, when most Lilim were so afraid of contact. No wonder she had the strength to fight angels: she might have closed her AT field out of self-defense like all the other Lilim, but on some level she was refusing to be afraid, to stay away from others. "She wants to be acknowledged, considered valuable, so she's trying to provoke him into not just fighting her, but fighting to win her respect and approval of his genes, personal strength and honor. Female planetary humans can only have so many children, unlike males like Shinji and we angels, so it's necessary for male humans as well as male animals to prove that not only are their genes the most suitable for combination to produce new life, but they can be relied on to protect those children if anything happens. After all, women put themselves in danger to bring forth new life: why should they do that for someone who doesn't respect this or isn't worth it? They possess free will, of course, and it takes many humans to make a world so women look for different traits, those who compliment their own. What Asuka values is striving to be the best: that's why Kaji's lack of ambition frustrates her. He is very good at what he does, but he is not willing to work to court her."

"He does this," Shinji told her. "He's completely clueless about how people talk to each other and act around each other, because he assumes it should be really simple, but it's…" Shinji reached for a word. "Kind of sad how much they give away with their AT fields. Everyone's trying to reach out, all the time, but they're too afraid to open up because of the angels. Everyone's longing to touch, to understand one another. Even when they give up, run away from the pain of failing to connect, their souls are still _trying_." It was that more than anything that made Shinji certain that psychic contact was something that was supposed to exist. The sheer _frustration _he'd seen so many times, people unable to give up because it just wasn't supposed to be that damn hard. Hearts were for sharing, like hands were for holding.

"Asuka's children would be intelligent, certainly. And brave," Rei said thoughtfully. A little too aggressive, maybe, but Shinji was a little too reluctant to fight, so maybe that would balance out.

Also, baby Shinjis. More Shinjis.

Overheard gossip among NERV staff suggested that one means of accomplishing this would be locking the two of them in a closet together. Rei could see that: since Shinji would be angry if someone (namely Rei) locked him in a closet as part of a breeding program, perhaps Asuka allying with him to escape would have the desired effect.

"The way she's looking at me… Is that just an angel thing?" Shinji asked Kaworu, backing away a little.

"She likes you and wants to be around you. You understand wanting more friends, don't you? And you're a very good friend," Kaworu said, smiling kindly at Shinji's silliness. "You're still so surprised that others value and appreciate you." It was cute, but really. He should know this by now.

Damn Gendo.


	9. Wrath of an Unborn God

_Random bit. Rebuild 3 should be coming out this fall: since I want to do something with the new character I may need to wait. I have some idea what her issues are, but I don't want to get halfway through something and then realize it's all been Jossed. That's not good for finishing projects._

* * *

He hadn't anticipated this.

It was often an effort to keep smiling, but normally that was because he wanted to stare, or weep, or scream.

Not because he wanted to kill.

He'd seen Gendo Ikari before, a fleeting glimpse in the shuttle, and it hadn't evoked this reaction. But that time, Kaworu had been alone on the moon. Shinji and Rei hadn't been with him.

Nor had he smelled the man. It was doing odd things to the Lilim brain he inhabited right now, things it hadn't done to the cat brain of his other body because the cat didn't have quite the same emotions wired in. Tomcats cared very little, if at all, for their kits.

But since this brain had his data stored in it, it knew Gendo's scent, from that cat's body, and automatically cross-referenced it with memories of Gendo and what Gendo had done to determine the proper way to react to the scent: was this a hint a predator was nearby, that food had spoiled? It was really a very good system, and one of the best at drawing buried memories out of Lilim.

The man that had hurt Shinji and taught Rei not to value her life was present. So were Shinji and Rei, and they were young, still vulnerable to his attacks, his words still had the power to hurt them and Gendo _intended _to continue to hurt them. He intended to kill them, because what was Instrumentality but death?

This obviously evoked the physiological reaction known as anger: this was one of the situations that physiological reaction was _for_. A system meant to monitor entire planets had no trouble understanding the mechanisms behind the release of adrenaline to boost strength, the deliberate chemical clouding of human reason in order to enable a human to harm a fellow human being without remorse or hesitation (at least not until after the enemy was safely dead) and all the other processes happening because this body had determined that Gendo Ikari _was fucking dead. _

Normally he wouldn't have any problem vetoing that, the way he'd shut down the entire system behind sexual attraction because for him it wasn't anything but a waste of time. The trouble was that emotional response?

The anger, no, the _wrath _of an angel was a dangerous thing. Not something to be invoked lightly. If they used the powers carelessly they would devastate worlds, the way this one had lost more than 80% of its life in Second Impact.

But there was one time when it was …acceptable for an angel to fight with everything they had. When all the reasons _they _had not to fight, not to destroy life, had to be overridden. When a world had begun to evolve the precursors of its future children, but they weren't yet sentient, hadn't yet gained their own AT fields. Couldn't protect themselves, not yet.

Shinji, and now Rei… they were all Kaworu had in this world. So a part of him was evaluating the amount of free LCL in the vicinity ('in the vicinity' by angel standards, which meant 'ten light-minutes or so, unless someone else's planet is closer than that') and exactly how to make that LCL part of his consciousness, an extension of his physical form, so he could bring it down on this entire geofront, on all of Gendo Ikari's works, like, well, what it was. The fist of a wrathful… No, not an angel, not a messenger: once he had his own world he would no longer be a message sent to the universe, a bearer of life into the darkness, he would be a creator. A _god_. All of the life of the world not protected by its own AT field would be his flesh: _everything _would seek Gendo Ikari's death. And although life could exist in a vacuum, no life could exist on its own. Would his flesh be devoured by his own symbiotic bacteria? Would…

And now he was imagining gory deaths for the man. That was _wrong_, but this man was a threat to this world, and _kill it_. Despite all that was good and holy, despite all ideals and justice and civilization and rules, the existence of that which threatened children who could not yet defend themselves could not be permitted _kill it_.

_Kill it. _

No. He would not.

"_Shinji? Sorry to bother you, but…_" Emotions were easier to convey than words anyway.

He felt Shinji's surprise, then how it made him happy as much as it bothered him that it was so hard for Kaworu _not _to kill on his behalf. "_I won't have to walk or talk or anything, right? Just hold the body in existence until the briefing is over." _

"_If you don't mind. It's not just that I'm worried I'll attack him, I'm worried that I'll flare my AT field_." As a threat display, to show this insult-to-insects what he was dealing with, that he'd _better _run and leave the world that was _not _Tabris' world but that of the Lilim alone.

"_Yeah, there's no way they'd miss that_." Shinji had a lot of practice keeping a poker face while talking to Kaworu inside his head. Years of boring classes, 'family dinners' trapped with his aunt and uncle. Shinji still thought it was pretty clever of him to get Kaworu to entertain him by saying, 'Well, we'll have to talk to each other while I'm piloting, right? So I should learn not to react now, even if you say something funny or read me more Jules Verne.' "_Don't worry about it. It'll give me something else to think about, too_."

"_Oh?_" What happened? Why was Shinji angry? Not that he didn't have plenty of reason to be, but this was new.

"_It's all Asuka's fault. Are you sure there isn't some way to burn these horrible mental images out of my head_?" Shinji begged.

"_It's not good for you. What happened?" _Concern for the distress Shinji suffered now overrode his hypothetical thoughts about Gendo and how _easy _it would be to kill him, it would just take a second. Planetary humans were so fragile and the Commander was under a lot of stress: triggering one of the reactions known as 'strokes' in the right place would destroy most of his brain and at this close a range, in that small a scale, there would be no way to detect the involvement of an AT field.

He _really _wished he'd been able to get SEELE to stop making him learn 'self-defense' that really amounted to assassination a lot earlier. He couldn't help knowing about the bacteria and how important the Lilim immune system was because all things strived to live, but planetary humans were so _inventive _when it came to killing. Thankfully SEELE had eventually admitted that despite all the fun possibilities offered by a physical AT field, they really didn't _need _an angel to carry out assassination missions, not when they already had agents who were more than good enough at it. Thank goodness for the ones who hadn't wanted to use the Holy Messenger as an errand boy, or stain pure alabaster hands with the blood of infidels and all that kind of nonsense that normally made Kaworu have to try not to wince.

"_She said that she'd thought Rei might have the bad taste to be interested in me the _other _way," _before Rei knew they were siblings, or so Shinji hoped: if Asuka really had been implying Rei was that level of… then Shinji was going to have to punch her teeth out, and if _he _beat _Asuka _in a fistfight, then once people's jaws undropped they would wonder where he'd learned any of it, although since Shinji had been casually referring to his teacher since he came her he hoped Misato would just think that oh, so he had learned some martial arts (and still was that bad at willing himself to fight, which meant he really was kind of hopeless at it), and wouldn't actually check his background to find that there hadn't even been a club for it at his school, forget an actual dojo anywhere nearby. And it was hard enough to get his uncle to let him take cello lessons from a neighbor, although promising to walk himself there and back had helped once his uncle actually believed he was serious. It was only a couple of miles, less than half of the distance to school and it wasn't like his aunt hadn't made him get himself there once she was relatively sure he wouldn't get lost.

Shinji had grown up rambling all over semi-deserted post-apocalyptic rural Japan in order to get out of the house. To him, anyone who would actually_ drive_ to the store to get groceries, forget complaining about what was only a half-mile walk was either amazingly lazy or a real wuss, because Shinji didn't consider himself really strong and it was a breeze for _him._ Except Misato. He _definitely _wasn't going to even _think _anything like that about Misato.

But, leaving his aside his desire to keep his balls intact, "_Then she wondered if I had any twin fantasies, since from what she'd heard it was legal in Japan for cousins to marry."_

"_There wouldn't be anything wrong about it if you did. It's only natural for humans to want more of the people they love."_ How on earth had Lilim gotten the idea that they were a monogamous species in the first place? Surely it was obvious from the amount of differentiation between genders that they were not a promiscuous species, certainly not, but neither polygamous nor monogamous either. Well, on average. They should choose what made them happy.

Honestly, of all the things that could have been screwed up, shouldn't sex have been the last to go, when it was such a fundamental drive? Hedging it about with all these conditions, trying to protect themselves and not just from being abandoned with a child or health risks… Well, it wasn't something he could exactly understand to begin with, and it wasn't as though the terraforming drive of his fellow angels hadn't become equally twisted. Still, Shinji had been sexually mature for _years _now and he still hadn't done anything even though a lot of his friends from his old school had asked if he was interested in experimenting. While yes, Kaworu understood that Shinji didn't want to risk having a child that he wasn't yet prepared to look after and certainly couldn't abandon, that really couldn't be normal, could it? He'd gone online for answers and if Shinji needed some form of therapy Kaworu wasn't qualified to give only to find that this 'saving oneself for marriage' …concept had been around for thousands of years before Second Impact.

Millions of permutations of humanity in his generational history database, and this planet still managed to shock him with how weird it was.

"…_My father's trying to get Yui back again. And there's Rei, that looks like her. So Asuka talking about that made me think about how _he _treats Rei, and how he's nice to her, or something like it, when he isn't to anyone else." _

Not even Ritsuko, although Tabby hadn't passed _that _bit of news along to Shinji, who didn't recognize his own father's scent well enough to even subconsciously recognize it on Ritsuko. It wasn't as though Ritsuko regarded Shinji as a member of her family because of this, even though the children of those she loved should have been children she loved.

Well, it wasn't as though Tabris wasn't well used to the Lilim's ability to act as proper parents, or rather near-complete lack thereof. Perhaps because Lilith had been so neglectful, making the choice the false mother had in Solomon's tales and failing to shield them from the nightmares of the other angels? It wasn't as though their Allmother was providing a good example. And yet, "_Shinji, if you are implying that Gendo had a child of your mother made,"_ a mix of her genes and Lilith's, so Rei was genetically Shinji's half-sister, "_in order to have something identical to his lost mate in the context of what you just said about twins…" _

"_It burns!" _ Shinji agreed, sending a wince.

"_We can talk about it later, but _not when I'm trying not to kill your father!_" _For Gendo to abuse Rei in that way as well, potentially creating yet more children of Kaworu's child to twist and torment as he had these two little ones, so strong to endure what they had and retain the will to strive for more, for what they should have had?

"…_Sorry." _And Shinji really did fell bad. Misery did love company, but he didn't want to make Kaworu miserable. Or make him blow his top, and maybe blow the top off the geofront with it. "_I've never felt you this mad before_." He'd have to tell Rei, Shinji thought. She'd _felt _how Kaworu was, not just from his sendings but the memories Shinji had shown her. So she'd know how close to impossible it was for him to get truly angry, how much he had to care to come this close to losing control and turning Gendo into a pincushion on her behalf. "_He hasn't. I already figured out a way to ask_." Obliquely, so his little sister wouldn't figure out what he was talking about if she still had that much of her innocence left.

"_That wouldn't happen anywhere else, not so easily. It wouldn't be possible to conceal something like that, not unless they were obviously a monster, not without imprisoning the child so no one could feel them. This world…"_

Shinji could feel how it made Kaworu sick, the way humans did when they saw something horrible, something that made them want to throw up in the hopes something was making them hallucinate, or doing that would keep it from poisoning them, from contaminating them. The way finding out that _people _triggered Second Impact and intended to do it all over again made Shinji feel, because how could _anyone… _If humans were capable of doing something like that, would _he_ be capable of it, if he was contaminated with whatever madness this was? It was his body as well as his soul that rejected it so violently Tabris had actually had to avoid him for a couple days. Shinji's mental AT field was so determined to annihilate whatever the source of this evil was it would attack anything that moved until he calmed down.

Shinji hated the thought of killing, but if he was ever in the same room with Kihl, the bastard was going to spend the rest of his life drooling after Shinji burned away the mind that could contemplate anything so, so… _Urgh_.


	10. Use the Force, Rei

The Ikaris. The Dr. Akagis. Lilith and all of her planet.

Rei didn't know if Earth was beyond saving (and she hoped not, because it was Shinji's planet), but the fact remained that in Rei's experience, it was not possible to properly look after babies there. Yes, it could be argued that this was because none of the parent-child sets Rei had observed had parents who tried properly, but that was even more frightening a prospect. What if there was something in how the angels had distorted earth that made parents not care properly for children? What if it affected her?

She didn't want to be like Yui. She didn't want her dream of being surrounded by family to be replaced by Yui's dream of being eternally alone, with everyone else including her own son long dead.

So yes, she wanted her own planet.

It was fortunate that this was in accord with Kaworu's own idea of how to handle her training: it seemed that since all of the other angels she had experienced had come as destroyers and she had been raised to think of herself as a tool, she needed to come to understand that she was not a destroyer, not the enemy of worlds and their people, but a creator. That if she was a tool, she was not merely _Gendo's _to own: she was a Seed of Life, born of the wishes of countless lives all the way back to the First Ancestral Race and the first being to know love for their children, hope for the future and trust that no matter how strange and powerful they would made, even children of such a different sort would use their powers for the good of those who lived instead of becoming enemies to them.

She could feel that now, doing this, unleashing the light of her soul instead of hiding it. Through her flowed great power, the gift of minds Dr. Akagi could never hope to equal in her pettiness.

Rei's will, Rei's emotions were not meaningless, not when they could shape worlds. She could not be caged, not when all of time and space was hers to travel (although Kaworu had cautioned her that she shouldn't range too far: there was a part of her that was tethered to Earth), hers to search for a better world. And if she couldn't find one, then she had the power… She _was _the power that could make one.

She was not an angel, not a messenger meant to carry Gendo's soul to his uncaring love: she was a _god_. She wasn't able to think it through yet, wasn't able to put this feeling into words, this expansion of her mind and awareness, the awakening of parts of her that had long been stifled, but _yes_.

At first she'd played Asteroids with Shinji in this model of the solar system Shinji was dreaming, but once Kaworu was satisfied that she knew how to access hyperspace, change her shape, redirect mass and impacts and the things that were most important for her to know in order to survive, class was over for tonight and she was allowed to go play in her new sandbox.

As she shaped this red earth, as subroutines began calculating the first primitive life forms, little more than self-perpetuating chain reactions, that would begin to groom it for greater and greater life, growing stronger and stronger under her care, she knew.

_This _was what that power was meant to be used for.

"_Two hundred and eighteen points in one shot!" _

…

"_Guys, did you see that?"_

Rei couldn't be upset with Shinji when he was her brother and he was so happy, and the whole point of the score was how helpful this would be to her.

"_I've got that asteroid labeled and I've marked the trajectory for when you do this for real."_ She felt Shinji's stunned excitement. "_Wow, though_." New high score!

"_That is impressive._ _Pass me the radioactive elements?" Kaworu asked, still focused, still in the zone that Shinji's excitement had jarred Rei out of. She felt him giving the lump of iron at Mars' core a directed impulse that felt like when Dr. Akagi hit Rei's knee with a rubber hammer to test her reflexes. "This is going to take more work to kick-start than I thought. Sol is one of the oldest third-generation suns in this galaxy: I should have realized its planets wouldn't have as much radioactive material as the systems in my original galaxy did." _ , hopefully he'd have worked out how to get Mars' core molten again by the time Rei wanted to start: she wasn't going to leave Earth now, not when Shinji needed her.

"_Sure," _Shinji said, using the part of Kaworu's mind's programming he was borrowing to isolate them and hand them off to Kaworu through hyperspace. "_You know, there's a lot of it already refined on Earth, and a lot of it's waste or underwater anyway." _

Rei felt Kaworu's wince. Taking material from an already-claimed world? Yes, it wasn't doing Earth any good now, and what was seeping into the red sea wouldn't be helping if there was anything left there to kill, but there were people on Earth and eventually they'd need to do something to keep their own planet's core from cooling down and maintain their environment.

Right now, there wasn't anyone to stop Kaworu, and a lot of people might actually thank him as long as he didn't touch their strategic weapon supplies or do anything to what they were actually _using_. But if this was during a normal system settlement? If Earth had an angel of its own to speak for it, to defend the interests of its children even a thousand thousand planetary generations down the line?

"_Making use of it is the practical thing to do_," Rei said, and wondered why part of her approved of the way Kaworu wasn't quite refusing, since right now Shinji was really as close to an angel as Earth had to speak for it, but was only a hair's breadth away from doing so, no matter how much work it would save him. Not that the work was a disincentive: Rei enjoyed this work, which was why part of her regretted that Shinji had woken her out of her zone.

Then she realized that, yes, these two actually cared about her feelings, and she finally had someone to explain her feelings to her, so she said, "_I am divided_," and sent the strange mixture of reactions.

Oh, Shinji knew _that _one, after having to kill. "_Conscience is who you are in the dark_," he told her, white-paneled wings extending further as he teleported above the surface of Mars' atmosphere to come in and land next to her. After reentry. Entering an angel's planet & its atmosphere the slow way at first, unless you had permission to come in through hyperspace (or were used to what amounted to invading it, like Kaworu and Earth), was both polite and practical in the same way as notifying a human by knocking at their AT field before entering their mind: fewer guests died that way. "_Just because Dr. Akagi could get away with killing my other little sister_," and how terrible Shinji felt, for Rei's twin that he hadn't known to save. "_That didn't mean it was right." _Just to her, Shinji also sent that, "_Normally he's not as uptight as he's been about this, really. It's just that with what all the other angels did and are doing… he blames himself. So he doesn't want to do anything else that could hurt us." _Even though how could Tabris have known that giving the others a time out was wrong, for a species that thought in terms of billions of years? The sensible thing for them to do would have been to just shut down, and they _never _should have started screaming at developing humans out of anger and jealousy that _they _should have had the planet, these should be _their _children.

"_Ah. So I appreciate the knowledge that he should care when it comes to treating _me _fairly, even though I don't see the point of caring so much about this." _Well, this was a minor thing, so it was proof a more serious matter would be handled accordingly?

Rei hadn't sent that privately, so Tabris' response was, "_Have you thought about how _easy _theft is for an angel? I have a few billion from SEELE's operational funds stocked away in various places, just to be on the safe side, and that's just electronic theft." _Most of the things Tabris might actually need money for someday were the kind of thing that cost what governments called 'real money,' since he wouldn't need money for something he could do with his own power. Music was another matter entirely: acquiring art, the Lilim efforts to communicate the truth of their hearts, with money tainted by deception?

Spiraling around Shinji's path of descent, Tabris continued, _"I can also locate gold, the platinum group and other valuable metals and extract them from bank vaults or hidden treasuries as easily as Shinji just handed me those: easier, since they're already refined. Since people don't like wasting their time, and we want to achieve our goals, we all want to do the easiest, most efficient things, yes? Even if you may be right, and humanity would like it if someone removed most of their fissionables, I don't actually have permission and breaking into someone's planet or house to take something is still theft. It's not about the minerals: I can sieve them out of the rest of the solar system, it will just take a little longer. It's about my own principles and idea of what is acceptable. If we just do what is easiest without thinking about the consequences… What kind of world would someone like that create, Rei? How would they affect the other humans around them, Shinji? Just because I have power doesn't mean I should ignore the rights of the Lilim, their rights to their own homeworld." _

The other angels… If they were in their right minds they'd have to agree that even if Lilith might not have the right to Earth, it was too late for any other angel to take that right because the Lilim had it now, and the children were not responsible for the sins of their was too late to reboot Earth or mine it for resources like an unclaimed world, not when there were _people _there now.

"_Sorry,_" Shinji said, because he'd heard this lecture before. "_It's called integrity, Rei. Wholeness. Being aware of who you are, and doing everything in a way that is according to who you are, that fits with your principles and enforces them on the universe. It's a lot more important for, you know, normal planets, since there people are more aware of what other people are like. We all create ourselves with our actions, so… Act lazy and uncaring, and you'll make yourself and the light of your soul weak and unable to do much, because if you don't care enough about the universe, you're not going to make the effort to change it?" _Shinji sent as he dumpedhis inertia into another dimension so he didn't actually have to decelerate in order to taxi to a landing a moment before Tabris surged up out of the red earth like the long-extinct flying fish.

He looked something like a manta ray: the most obvious differences were that his wings (patterned, since adjusting panels would let him control his flight path, but not really feathered) were more like a bird's and the fan at the end of his tail was larger and more elaborate. Once he was in the air he didn't land: that was courtesy again. Even though this was a simulation dream, Mars was still the planet Rei had chosen as her own, so another angel shouldn't land on it. Helping out with the terraforming was one thing (although normally it was the planet's owner who directed and taught the other angels), but getting comfortable on its surface? Setting foot on it?

That was what had started all the trouble in the first place, in fact…

"_Anyway, Rei," _Shinji asked to change the subject, "_Have you thought about what you want the trees and everything – if you have trees – to look like? If you want some ideas, I've got a lot of science fiction movies, manga and all kinds of things that have crazy plants and animals on my player." _It was designed to look like an antique, the kind that just played a few songs.

"_That would be appreciated."_ Rei didn't want her children to have a boring planet, one that wasn't beautiful at all: she wanted to make a glorious world. "_I still don't have any ideas for an angel form I could use in combat to conceal my identity, either. Tell me, Shinji, what gave you the idea for yours?" _

If the empty cockpit had eyes, it would have been staring at her. "_You haven't seen Star Wars? Right, of course you haven't seen Star Wars." _Dammit, Gendo… _"This is… Well, you'll see_." Tomorrow, after they woke up, because although Shinji could draw on everything he had ever experienced & the files Tabris had copied to him for his dream world, eating dream popcorn still just wasn't the same and Rei needed to have the full experience. "_The prequels, though_…" They'd bugged him ever since he'd made the connection between what Gendo was willing to do to bring Yui back and Anakin's desire to save Padme that also killed so many innocent people. "_And Kaworu's going to want to show you the Fantasias… I should make a list_."

"_The Fantasias_?" Rei wondered.

"_Artwork set to music. The first one is amazing: to think of drawing all of that by hand_!"

* * *

The clones floated in the LCL, thinking very little because there was nothing to think about. Not until someone appeared, and then there were smiles because there was something to look at! A moving thing!

"Having observed the consequences of giving a yo-yo to a flock of flamingos," Rei said with her usual emotionless voice and expression, "I now wish to observe the consequences of giving a ball to a group of kittens."

Because she had also witnessed the consequences of giving blasters to a group of clones, and even though these were going to be given Evas instead, Shinji had expressed the thought that Rei's clones were therefore also his little sisters, and he would not want them to be uselessly killed, or trying to kill him the way the SEELE Emperor's clones tried to kill Shinji Skywalker. Rei was fairly certain that her clones would have better aim.

* * *

_____Darth Gendo... Reia, you're my sister... Obi Wan Kaworu... Han Misato & Pen-Penna... Asuka Jade... Has anyone written this yet?_

_It's interesting that Gendo becomes one with Adam's flesh when they're so alike: both of them are fathers who want to devour their own children, calling them to Tokyo-3, calling them to their deaths in order to trigger Third Impact and get what _they _want, and they don't care about sacrificing their children's futures in the process._

_On the other hand Kaworu, who contains Adam's soul, says that Shinji needs to kill him and live on afterwards because Shinji and the Lilim (the children of Lilith) are the ones who should have a future. _

_Then there's Yui, in the Eva, flesh like Lilith's, who also wants Third Impact, wants something that will prove that mankind existed for all of eternity and also doesn't hesitate to sacrifice her son for that. Then there's Rei with Lilith's soul who __wants Shinji to be happy and sacrifices her own life so that Shinji can live. _

_During Third Impact, Kaworu and Rei appear as proof that it's possible for someone to care about someone else, that someone can love Shinji & proof that people can and will work to understand one another and bridge the gap. The first people to care about a child would normally be their parents, and good parents want their children to live on, to inherit the future: they make sacrifices for their children, they don't use them as human sacrifices. _

_Gendo and Yui, merged with base, monstrous flesh, are the parents that devour their own young. Kaworu and Rei, with the souls of beings meant to give life to worlds, instead symbolize the ideal parents, those who would rather sacrifice their own lives than allow harm to befall their children. They're the reasons he's born again into the new world, so they become the parents of the reborn Shinji._

_Rei's similarity and connection to Shinji's mother is inescapable, but I haven't seen anyone address the issue of Kaworu's… pretty stark opposition to Gendo. _


	11. Wheat From The Chaff

_A little introspection and thinking about characters chapter. Because a character without blind spots would again be too perfect, and there's the imagery of Shinji in the sandbox alone in the original series. What would LCL do to sandcastle construction? _

_Although Shinji isn't a very assertive person in the original series because of the psych damage, to remove that character trait would be to remove a lot of what makes him Shinji, so in this it's not so much lack of self-worth or learned helplessness as learned passive-aggression. Direct confrontation with adults is something he's rarely won for various reasons, including the fact most adults in the Evaverse are too messed up to listen to reason, so if reason doesn't work he doesn't have any experience winning via confrontation, just avoidance and obstinacy (in the 'refusing to be moved/work to rule' sense, among others). His social-fu with enemy agents (and he's met a lot of people actively out to harm or sabotage him), is to sidestep/redirect attacks because a kid, trying to confront adults, is viewed as automatically in the wrong and fighting back means he loses._

_He actually is a more aggressive person in this 'verse, but because he's focused on how to get what he wants more than what people whose opinions he often doesn't give a damn for think of him, Asuka's still right that he doesn't stand up for himself. It's something he needs to learn how to do, when I turn this into a proper buildingsromun, although it will be one centered around multiple characters._

_Also, Mother Nature is a bitch. Angels don't lack humanity's ruthlessness, it's just channeled differently because they have a different priority set. They're not hunters, they're ecosystem managers, which is interesting to think about._

* * *

There was a thing. It was shiny, but not metallic. It had a very weird shape without any angles and was also a strange color, never before seen.

It must be an angel!

Kill it!

Light refracted off it oddly: it must be powering up an attack!

Run away!

Rei watched with wide red eyes as one of her clones repeatedly charged at and then jumped away from a bright green apple. If the kitten had actually been scared, Rei would have explained that apples were for eating and taken a bite out of it. Shinji had told her that the bright green apples like that were tangy and good, when he'd taken Rei along when he went shopping to introduce her to foods that would be interesting things for the kittens to taste and experience.

Since the kitten was not actually mauling the apple and licking up the tasty juices that leaked out, or truly seeing it as an enemy to be afraid of (after all, the mommy was here), this must be 'play.' Running simulation tests of future activities.

Like the time Shinji showed her and Kaworu (although Kaworu already knew and was just pretending not to for Section 2's benefit) how to build a sand castle. In Rei's experience, living in the fortress city of Tokyo-3, humans spent a great deal of time and effort building well-defended castles and then rebuilding them when they were damaged. So it only made sense for younger humans to experiment with different materials, even though sand wouldn't hold up very well in the face of an angel attack. She had also found the cooperative aspect of the endeavor pleasing: one of them would be sent to get a bucket of water from the sea, in order to wet the sand. The water and the LCL improved its ability to stick together and from a structure. They would also suggest different ideas for design and improving the defenses or aesthetic appeal.

A seemingly pointless activity was in fact training to run Tokyo-3. Just as the kitten imagining that the apple was an enemy was equivalent to battles against angels in the simulator, with the kitten's imagination serving as the virtual reality simulator, eliminating the need for expensive equipment.

All the toys Shinji recommended to her were relatively simple. Balls that rolled when pushed, things to climb on so they didn't damage her sheets by climbing up them to the top of her bed (mostly): things that did things, and not with the press of a button but so that the kittens, who hadn't been able to interact with the world before, could see the action and reaction and figure out why what happened happened.

Once again, Rei wished she had a big brother like Shinji when she was a smaller child. It wasn't as though she was too old to see the appeal of a bouncy ball's role in testing reflexes and ability to calculate vectors and respond correctly. Quite the opposite, actually. She just wished she'd been introduced to these things sooner, that she'd had more Shinji. Well, the kittens didn't have a big brother, although Rei was willing to share Shinji, but Rei would make sure they had all the wonderful things.

Several of the kittens were chasing each other around, playing a game that Shinji would have described as a variant of tag, but mostly rejoicing in the fact that they could move around, and touch each other, and crash into each other while going fast enough to send both kittens tumbling, which they decided was very funny and should be done again after they verified that their sisters were okay. Three were playing a game where they deliberately limited their options for movement, in order to learn how to move despite handicaps and avoid hazards: once again, Shinji would have recognized it as The Floor Is Lava. Although he and his friends had mostly played it outdoors, with trees and big rocks.

Rei didn't really like that two of them were gnawing at a bone after the others had already picked it clean of all the meat but the meat that was at the center of bones, according to the butcher, but according to Shinji real cats needed meat. Even though Rei hadn't objected to being fed food that tasted mostly of chemicals before, after the grocer cut open a crisp green apple for her so she could have a bite of it, and a bite of the other one so she could taste the differences, she wanted better and more interesting things for the other Reis.

She hadn't been aware that life could be so _good _before she met Shinji. That the mere process of getting food, of acquiring sugar, fiber and various vitamins could be a shock like diving into cool water, could make her mind perk up with happy interest the way the kittens' were because this was _interesting _and it was _good_. The hunger for data, for new tastes and sensations and new things to try, new tools to use.

Now Rei definitely agreed with Kaworu now: school had to be a SEELE plot, because otherwise how could information acquisition possibly be _boring_?

She wished she could have gone with Shinji and Kaworu on their hunt, but it was imperative that Rei watch the kittens. Both sets of her inner programming agreed that not only was it the most important thing, but the most wonderful thing.

If Rei had known how to be more emotionally demonstrative, she would have been jumping up and down and going, "Eeeeee!" to demonstrate that she was experiencing a glee overload that was compromising her judgment. On some level, it was fortunate that she wasn't, because seeing Mommy signal that she was currently insane would have worried the kittens, while Mommy calmly and lovingly watching them instead signaled that all was proceeding according to the proper path for terrestrial human development and they were to proceed with the experimentation in the knowledge that Mommy would let them know if they were doing anything potentially fatal.

Oh look, that one had gotten herself wrapped up in the white toilet paper again.

…Aww. Rei had stopped putting rolls out after the first six times the kittens clawed them apart, so they must have figured out how to get into the cabinet.

It was things like this that made Rei wonder if these ingenious little things were really her clones. Either she was underperforming even more seriously than she thought or Tabris was right about how Gendo had stunted her.

* * *

Kaworu hummed happily while he pulled out the weeds from Kaji's plot, after watering them and checking soil balance and other factors.

Shinji found it a little interesting that Kaworu, who was a vegetarian and cared a lot about environments, not to mention that he didn't want to hurt people, was ruthlessly killing plants. While he was leaving the ladybugs alone, any bug that ate watermelons would have been quite casually crushed.

Even though Kaworu had red eyes and magic powers (actually sufficiently advanced technology powers), it was hard for Shinji to think of him as a potential danger, even now that he'd fought other angels, because Kaworu was Kaworu, Tabris or not.

There was a Star Trek movie about how terraforming could actually do a lot of damage, since it was overriding the way the planet had been before. Kaworu showed him that movie not just to introduce him to some concepts, but as part of explaining Second Impact. How the seas were turned to LCL, how the seasons Lilith had designed could be eliminated, and how putting them back would damage the environment again, because live had started to recover by adapting itself to the new circumstances.

Most people talked about Nature as something wonderful, something else lost to the world because of humans and Third Impact. Kaworu had taught Shinji that life was so precious because if nature was left to take its course, things died. Changing the environment, even to make it hold more life, meant killing a lot of the plants and animals that relied on the previous environment.

Angels weren't supposed to hurt sentient beings, but Lilith _was _Gaea, was Earth's Mother Nature. And she was one hell of a bitch, which was probably part of why humans were still around despite the pissed-off angels. Obstinate determination to hold on to a planet no matter who had a problem with that was a survival trait.

Shinji was pretty certain that if Kaworu created earth, if humanity was descended from him, they would have wiped out tigers, lions, cougars, crocodiles and every other predator species that thought it could eat humans for breakfast before they even invented guns. Kaworu liked to think that he wasn't like the other angels, and that was true: Kaworu wasn't insane, but if he had gone insane like the rest of them?

Lilim didn't read as human to angels, not with their AT fields closed. They read as malformed, stunted proto-homonids that were going to go extinct with the next climate shift anyway. Proof Lilith had screwed up such a wonderful planet.

Even insane, the angels weren't dumb. They were capable of strategies, and learned from those that came before. If he'd cared about getting to Adam, if he had to go through humanity's defenders to regain his sanity and his chance to finally create his children, Tabris would have picked them off in the casual way he was picking those weeds and putting them in a bag for the kittens. He wouldn't be humming the _Rite of Spring_, but other than that?

It wasn't as though there was much else for them down here in the geofront. There weren't any trees old enough to have dropped old, twisted-up branches that would shift around depending on where you stood on them, not even kitten-sized ones. Whoever emptied this out hadn't even bothered to leave behind any interesting rocks. Shinji would probably have to go to the seashore again to get some for his nieces. Pity the LCL meant there wasn't any more driftwood: his uncle had a piece that was worth several thousand yen.

Nieces.

He was an uncle.

It was funny that piloting a giant mecha and being responsible for saving the world hadn't given him the same kick in the pants first really realizing who Rei was and what that _meant_ had, and now this. Well, it didn't help that Gendo wanted him to think of himself as a tool, and that was NERV's institutional attitude. Kaworu told him the fate of Earth was in his hands, but he'd been hearing that for awhile, so it was just Kaworu being Kaworu for him to think Shinji mattered. Apparently parents who weren't like Gendo were supposed to think of children that way.

He had nieces. Easily squished nieces. At least Rei now knew enough about her carrier admin-level AT field to fend off a conventional army and/or get out of range before they could lay a finger on her. He was going to have to make sure he knew how to identify the roofs of Rei's neighborhood from an Eva, because even though Kaworu had taught the kittens how to reflexively raise their AT fields if they were in serious danger first thing, there was no way NERV would miss almost a dozen AT fields being raised and flaring frantically for Mommy. Unless they decided to join the battle. They were made for dummy plugs and they did have combat programming based on Rei's simulator data, after all.

The thought of Asuka dancing around trying to shoot at or stab the things running around her ankles was funny only until he remembered that this was Asuka, so she might actually manage to hit one.

…Damn. They were going to have to let Asuka in on this. Otherwise when she found out, she really would kill them.

There was just something about Asuka that made him so nervous, that made him feel like he really wasn't qualified to deal with this in the same way the first time piloting an Eva and having to kill someone did. She wasn't the first person with a chip on her shoulder she'd met: a lot of the kids at his old school grew up having to fight for their parents to pay any attention to them too. Shinji was quiet at first because he was afraid of being abandoned again, but in some ways he thought they'd had it harder. Like the oceans even before LCL: water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink. Their parents were right there, and yet the other kids didn't get much more affection than Shinji did from lost Yui and Gendo.

That was when Shinji realized that yes, it was exactly the same kind of fear as when he was fighting for people's lives. The kind that said _this is important, don't screw it up_.

So she scared him because he thought he might like her? And maybe he made her so aggressive because she thought she might like him? That was what Tabris though.

So she was fighting him off and he was trying to get away from her _because _they would be good together?

Shinji's eyebrows scrunched up, and he was lucky Kaworu was too busy with the plants and whatever was going on with whatever else he was doing to ask what was up. His cat body wasn't here, and Kaworu wouldn't want to get out of the habit of multitasking, so he must be doing something else.

Something other than noticing how Shinji's AT field had first tightened up defensively, because a logic hole in how he thought meant his mind was vulnerable to attack, and then relaxed, went back to the level of tension he'd felt because NERV was enemy territory _before _Asuka arrived and got in his space.

Still, was his relationship with Asuka really that important? If he screwed up in an Eva fight, more people would die. If he screwed up with Asuka, she'd punch his lights out, but no one's lives were on the line…

Shinji blinked. It was the same kind of worry Tabris had about Rei. Rei wasn't just important for her own sake, but if she was irreversibly damaged, then a world would never be made. If Shinji screwed up with Asuka, there were lives that might not be born.

"_So not only am I thinking of _Asuka," the crazy valkyrie, "_as a potential mother of my children, but the potential that we might have that important a relationship was what was scaring me away?" _Shinji shook his head, throwing his bag back over his shoulder after giving up on finding anything else interesting around here besides some hay and stray clover, scents that Shinji liked and the kittens should adore after being stuck with nothing but LCL all their lives.

Every time he thought he understood how crazy people were…

Shinji froze, hearing something out of place. No, Kaworu's Tabby-form wasn't here…

Huh, maybe there was something worth bringing back to Rei here.


	12. Shut Up or the Breakfast Gets It

_Re. the Moonkitten chapter: Actually, Tsukiyomi dislikes basically every single other Eva._

_Evas 00 and 01 are jerks. Eva 01 wants to cause Third Impact, and did in the anime. Eva 02 got controlled by Kaworu in ep. 24 when Kaworu is _his_ pilot. Eva 04 let an angel control it and use it to attack humanity. The Mass Production Evas let SEELE control them and use them to cause Third Impact. _

_And, most annoyingly of all, so far they have _all gotten to do more fighting than him_. Rebuild!Kaworu stopped Third Impact with a one-hit kill, and since then Gendo hasn't wanted to deploy SEELE's Eva or pilot. Instead, he's had Ritsuko and her people poking at it all the time to discover and copy the improvements, and he doesn't like that. Especially when _bored.

_So his reaction to the idea of getting to run around NERV beating up the other Evas is less, 'this is a fun game, huh guys?' and more gleefully punching the other Eva's faces in while trashing the place cause it sucks._

_Kaworu is friendly and dislikes hurting people. Tsukiyomi is a very unhappy (new environment, not allowed outside much, stressed, etc.) toddler-stage war machine. Meaning that if he could get away with it, he'd totally start smashing things. Gleefully. Like Naoko/Unit 00 going berserk and trying to punch Gendo through the observation window, although she was more pissed off and Tsukiyomi would be more tantrum/pissed off. However, being able to communicate using telepathy instead of struggling with words decreases his stress level compared to a normal toddler, most of his life coaching is Kaworu, who does not encourage smashing things, and he knows that if he were to, for example, break apart his Eva cage to go for a walk he would be in so, so much damn trouble since his soul-father can totally kick his ass, war machine or not, and then time outs plus lectures. _

_So being given _orders _to beat people up, even Evas instead of Angels, would be very yes since he'd really like to beat something up, especially people he dislikes._

* * *

The apartment door opened quietly and Kaworu padded into the hallway, heading towards the balcony. "Oh?" he said when he reached the dining room that doubled as the apartment's common area. "You're up early, Misato."

"So are you," was her response. "Having trouble adjusting to the time change?"

He smiled especially brightly, even for him, in the way that she already recognized as, 'Oh, you want to talk about music?' "No, I found this wonderful place by the shore to do my practices."

"Your practices?"

He nodded. "I sing. I had to wait until one of the rooms with soundproofing was free on the moonbase to practice it and the violin, since the vocal exercises aren't all that interesting to listen to, but there's a broken statue of some kind of winged beast," the proportions were wrong for it to be a humanoid angel, "a little ways into the water at the shore of one of the crater lakes, facing out into the east, with mountains to the west. It's just a marvelous atmosphere."

She raised an eyebrow. "Dead angels, seas of blood… Isn't that a little morbid for you?" Taking a drink after that statement disguised the suspicion in it, or might have if he hadn't seen her watching him through binoculars along with Mr. Hyuga.

"Blood and dead angels both signify a _defeated _enemy. Then the new dawn, breaking over the world, bringing with it the promise of peace and a new era. The victory greater for the magnitude of the struggle, the night survived, the suffering endured to reach the new day." His hands tried to frame that vision before he remembered his audience. "Sorry," he said a little bashfully, "but it is very inspirational." A pity she'd left before he finished reporting to SEELE and moved on to the singing, but he knew she hadn't been able to hear him at that distance anyway.

"Are you planning on making a habit of going down there then?"

Hmm. "Well, I'd like to find somewhere inside the geofront, and somewhere in the city. There's just such a range of environments down here. It's a pity I can't visit mountains when an angel can attack at any time, and… I'm hoping to use this opportunity to connect with the emotions of the composers as much as I can, the world they were crafting music of and in. I'd like to try singing in a crowd, but apparently you need a license for that."

"You do?" To burst out singing in a plaza somewhere? "Are you talking about performing?"

"Touji said it was called busking, and apparently a hat is required. Shinji said he would look into that, since he'd like an audience, or for Rei to get a chance to perform for an audience." Most likely both.

"Oh," Misato said, enlightened. "Remember to ask for a cut of the take."

"Kensuke already reminded them, since he knows a site for soundtracks. I have very few actual hard copies of anything, because of the expense of shipping weight up to the moonbase." He blushed, because it really would have been a lot of trouble for them if he couldn't teleport. "Just for birthdays and when I did well in simulations and other tests. I think I'd like used copies, not just because they're cheaper but for the sake of knowing that someone else listened to and enjoyed the music. I'll probably be sent back to the base afterwards, but storage lockers aren't that expensive: if I leave the key with Shinji, he said I could ship things I find online to him and he'd put them in storage for me."

"That's very nice of him." Afterwards? That was a good attitude for a pilot. For anyone. _She _certainly hoped there would be an afterwards, but the angels were tough bastards and getting tougher. "I can count on you three not to let it interfere with piloting?" Although she was certain there was no way they'd be able to get Rei to go along with it if it did.

The pale teenager nodded: of course they wouldn't let it interfere, and yes, he was grateful for Shinji. More than Misato knew. "I can't come back here someday and see the mountains, Vienna and… there's so much else I want to see." He couldn't if Third Impact happened and it was all gone.

"Do you mind if I come along with you some morning?" Misato asked, back to the topic of his report followed by morning practice.

"Of course not." Especially since that would give him an excuse not to report, if he was there to report in the first place. He'd chosen somewhere nice to make the report and followed it with music to take his mind off it, but he definitely did want to do that again. "If you want to come out to the statue, though, it might be a good idea to wear waterproof boots. I'm going to ask Hikari and Suzuhara if they know where I can buy some." As Misato could see, his shoes and socks were still soaked: he'd carried them inside with him instead of leaving them in the foyer. "I was going to put these out to dry on the balcony." The shoes anyway, the socks could go in the wash.

"Well, don't let me stop you. We don't need you catching a cold," she said, gesturing at the sliding door, which he kept open as he took his socks out of the shoes and set them down.

Misato, unlike Kaji whose hacks had caught Tabris' attention years ago, shouldn't have any particular reason to mistrust SEELE. So why was she out there to watch his report, he wondered. Had Kaji started to share information with her? When she was deep in the belly of NERV, and most of what Tabris was fairly sure Kaji knew implicated the group that became NERV more than SEELE? It was Gendo Ikari who had left the Katsuragi Expedition the day before Second Impact: the members of SEELE there stayed and died along with the ones, like Misato's father, who were completely in the dark. Tabris had been asleep when it happened, so he didn't have any idea what the man had seen that gave him enough warning to get Misato to the closest thing to safety. Unless SEELE had wanted her to survive for some reason: they were too damnably good at guarding the contents of the Secret Dead Sea Scrolls. He still didn't have any idea where the hard copies were, they'd never been scanned into any computer he had access to (no computer at all, he was almost certain of that) and all the members of SEELE who were allowed to know their contents already knew them, and only referred to them obliquely in conference calls. There weren't any helpful, 'as you already know' discussions. They took their communications security _seriously_, and regarded conference calls as so much of a breach of it in the first place that they weren't even going to drop obvious code-phrases. He'd first heard the phrase 'Secret Dead Sea Scrolls' from a conversation between Fuyutsuki and Gendo: the Sub-Commander was a couple orders of magnitude less properly paranoid than the others involved, but he seemed to know only a little more about _SEELE's _plans than he'd managed to figure out on his own.

It wasn't that Tabris wasn't also concerned with what Gendo was up to, but Gendo didn't have his fingers in half as many pies (Touji's phrase, and it was a good metaphor: ruining things that should have been treats for others) as SEELE did. He had one specific goal he was driven to reach, and the rest of the world didn't matter to him as long as it didn't get in his way.

He'd also told what was probably about ninety percent of his plan to Rei, so that she would carry it out if something happened to him. No, Gendo would become truly dangerous in the endgame, once he started actively working to find ways to bring this to fruition, ways around whatever obstacles appeared. Kaworu was on his radar, of course. Gendo could certainly guess that he was SEELE's version of Rei, if finding out about Kaworu hadn't given him the inspiration to create Rei in the first place, and now Kaworu had become close to Rei via Shinji. So far, Kaworu had never spent time around Rei in the (human) flesh without Shinji also being there. He'd told her the reason why, so she didn't take it the wrong way, but it was to everyone's benefit if Shinji, carefully kept in the dark Shinji, was the link between them and otherwise Kaworu didn't show any particular interest in her. Other than musical skill.

The eagerness with which Shinji had jumped on the idea their classmates came up with that he and Rei were related (instead of just defaulting to an appearance closer to the First Ancestral Race, since neither NERV nor SEELE had managed to figure out how to get them to use Terran skin pigmentation) meant Gendo might worry that Shinji was pushing the two of them at each other, but since SEELE thought Tabris' priorities were purely an angel's, Gendo might as well. Why would Tabris want to encourage the competition? None of the angels were going to sabotage those whose turns came before or after them: on the contrary, combat data was being uploaded to those who came afterwards, so Rei would benefit from whatever Tabris experienced. Gendo might even be hoping that the longer he left Tabris alive, the more SEELE would tell him and the more intel Rei would be able to give him.

Gendo as well as SEELE must think that they had the option of killing the current host and then the souls of Lilith and Adam would transfer to the next clone, wiped of any inconvenient bits of knowledge or personality. Now that Rei was trained, that wouldn't happen to her.

For a moment it puzzled him why she didn't remember being Lilith-

Kaworu blinked, looking out at the early morning light shining over the buildings of Tokyo-3. What had he been thinking about? Ah well.

"Yen for your thoughts? You spaced out there for a moment," Misato told him.

"Not really anything in particular," he told her. "I think you're right, I just spaced out. Maybe I should get more sleep, but…"

"Is it impairing your performance?" she asked, with a hint of, 'I am your commanding officer,' sternness there.

"No, I am keeping track of that. Lack of sleep can impair judgment as badly as consumption… as _reckless _consumption of alcohol," he corrected himself, blushing at the can of beer in her hand. He really hadn't meant to cause offense, but should she be drinking that in the morning before work? Well, it wasn't his place to say. "I've been fine so far, haven't had any trouble adjusting my sync ratio and that was one of the first things to go when we tested my ability to pilot under adverse conditions, like sleep deprivation."

Oh? "Adjust your sync ratio?" she asked mildly.

He nodded.

"Adjust your sync ratio?" Asuka demanded, startling Kaworu.

When had she come into the main room? He really had spaced out. It was probably his fault for not doing two things at once at the moment, since he'd wanted to focus on his report to SEELE and then providing Misato with a reasonable explanation for being out there at that hour in the first place, forget turning around and looking right at her when he'd felt someone's attention focusing on him. He'd manifest the cat again after making it through this conversation, he decided, nodding for Asuka's benefit while looking why he was wondering what everyone was so fussed about.

Shinji's door opened and he walked out, rubbing his eyes.

"Adjust your sync ratio?" Asuka demanded again, louder, startling Shinji more awake.

"Why is everyone up this early?" he asked, mystified. So much for having the kitchen to himself while he tried to create.

"How can you just talk about adjusting your sync ratio like it's easy?"

"Like it's humanly possible, for that matter," Misato added, and Kaworu realized that was why she was suspicious of him.

"You can't?" Shinji asked Asuka, equally mystified. "I mean, it's hard for me to make myself raise it, and sometimes she gets grabby so it takes a minute to lower it, but…"

Asuka grabbed his shirt. "How can an idiot like you control your sync ratio?" she screamed in his face, making him wince.

"Stop yelling, it's too early!" he screamed back, right in her ear. When she removed her arms to cover her ears he said apologetically, "And I just do it, okay Asuka? You just open your mind to the Eva. Or not, because mine is crazy and I don't want her in my head." He shuddered. "Anyway, Asuka, you _know _I don't know what the hell I'm doing, so why are you asking me in the first place? Ask Kaworu, okay? I have breakfast and lunch to make."

Asuka had to admit he had a point, so she turned back to the moonboy. "The Evas are alive," he said simply. "Shouldn't you be cleared for this? I mean, you pilot them. And you're our operations commander," he said to Misato, clearly puzzled. "They haven't told you this? Really?"

"They're alive?" Misato actually put down her can of beer. Answers. Now.

Kaworu nodded, but still looked unusually serious. "It is classified. I don't know what you're cleared for, but you really should have been told about this. If no one gives you a briefing on it by the end of today… I really shouldn't interfere in NERV internal affairs, but I think… Yes, this is important enough for someone piloting an Eva and the person planning our operations to know for me to go over the commander's head. Misato, would you do me a favor and tell whoever you ask to brief you that if they don't explain to you what you need to know, I will be forced to inform my direct superior at SEELE that NERV's fighting effectiveness is being compromised?"

"Good thinking," she told the boy. But then, bureaucratic and scientific infighting would require a lot of diplomacy in tight quarters like the ones up there. "You have your responsibilities, after all." And if the team he was a part of wasn't allowed what it needed to be effective, that affected _his _responsibility to fight, and was something _he _should pass up his own chain of command.

Even if that bypassed Gendo Ikari and sent it through other channels to the Committee for Human instrumentality that oversaw NERV on the UN's behalf.

Gendo would still be pissed about it, so Misato would try to get it out of Ritsuko without getting him directly involved, but he was already unhappy with having a pilot who answered to SEELE and only answered to him through Misato on the ground here. Especially when that meant he had to keep Unit 00 in storage for the moment.

"I'll handle this," she told Asuka. "But you're right: this is something we should be angry about. Both-all three of us. You weren't informed either, were you Shinji?"

Already putting pots on to boil, he turned to stare at them. "Gendo? Tell me anything? I found out when I was in the Eva and there was a crazy lady in there with me, and I had to let her in to make her move. It was the crazy lady taking over that made it go berserk. I figured all of them were the same, since Rei's went berserk too and she was injured like that."

"Tsukiyomi is…" Kaworu paused, considering. "He's young, but he certainly isn't crazy. I know someone said that it was significant that he was 'new.' Perhaps the others went mad because of the isolation, before they had anyone to talk to?"

"Talk to?" Everyone stared at him: only Shinji's confusion was feigned. Not that Yui talked to him.

"Well, yes. He liked the trip down here, but he's disappointed there haven't been any battles since we arrived. I'm the one that named him Tsukiyomi."

"So he's alive enough to have preferences?" Misato asked.

"Of course. He's sentient. He's not old enough to be very… complex yet, and he can only read because of what's in his programming-"

"He can _read?" _Asuka asked next, startled again."Sentient _and _sapient?"

"Yes, sapient. Not very complex plans, mostly hoping that if he asks enough he can fight something again, but yes." Kaworu hesitated. "I really think I should stop answering your questions. I don't know exactly what you're cleared for, or why, and I'd rather not be removed from this household as my punishment for saying too much, to prevent more slips."

"That's fine, Kaworu," Shinji said firmly, and since he was the one holding breakfast and more than capable of dumping it into the lunchboxes and leaving everyone else to forage for themselves while he dragged Kaworu off to pick up curry buns (they could shower and change at NERV), everyone else shut up.


	13. Kittinception

Shinji knocked on Rei's door. He noticed that the mail slot that used to be stuffed full of unread junk was empty: she must have taken all of it to give the kittens something to play with. Well, shred. Same thing.

After checking to make sure it was Shinji and she didn't need to hide the kittens, Rei opened the door and both of them came in, Kaworu carrying both bags of things they'd found to show the kittens. After the kittens ran around both of them because people, and not just people but people with new scents on their shoes, all of the kittens but one who dug her claws into Shinji's left sneaker and decided to see how long she could ride on top of it without falling off gathered around Kaworu because presents.

Shinji cleared his throat. "Rei?"

"Yes?"

"I hope this isn't more trouble, I mean… but, so…" Shinji got a hold of himself. "I brought you a present."

"More presents?"

"Well, those were really for the kittens. This is for you, well, and the kittens too. I still owe you more birthday presents, and…" Shinji decided to sort out the mechanics later and reached into his bag. "Would you mind closing your eyes and holding out your hands?"

She did as instructed, and a warm, soft weight she had become very familiar with today was placed into her hands. "Happy late first birthday," Shinji said. "You can open your eyes now."

She looked down to see a kitten, as she had suspected. A black kitten, an ordinary one, not a clone. Her angel senses let her know that the little thing was too thin, and it had been very hungry and starting to starve to death until Kaworu made it better. The kitten was still weak and needed a mother to look after it, but it was a kitten.

Kittens were her favorite things in the world except Shinjis, she had decided, and now Shinji had given her a kitten.

She didn't notice the burning in the corners of her eyes as Shinji explained, "I found it while we were looking after Mr. Kaji's garden, and it didn't look so good. Kaworu said it hadn't eaten in days, and I couldn't just leave it there or it would have died. I hope you don't mind, because you already have eleven to look after and this one makes a dozen, so you're probably too busy to look after it. I can see if anyone at school can adopt it, but all the animal shelters in Tokyo-3 are full because people are moving out and a lot of them abandoned their pets or gave them to the shelter, so even a kitten doesn't have much chance of being adopted now. He'll probably be put down if I give him to the shelter, and I couldn't let that happen. If you don't want it, I can feed him and then Tabby can teach him how to hunt once he's strong enough," since even if Tabris didn't like to kill, he could at least catch things and give them to the kitten to playhunt with, "so…"

Rei gulped. "I want him." Of course she did. It was a little thing that needed her, was looking up at her with weak but hopeful eyes and she should start warming more milk. "Thank you, big brother. He's, he's the best present I've ever gotten." Something that she would definitely like instead of gifts from Gendo that were really for Yui, things she must have liked and Rei often couldn't identify.

"Are you alright, Rei?" Shinji asked her worriedly, peering at her face.

"These, these are tears," she said. "I'm crying because I'm happy again." She hoped it didn't bother Shinji, but she was really very happy, she thought as she rubbed at her face.

Kaworu knelt on the floor, forming the weeds into a nest and putting some of the kittens into it to show them the concept, although they quickly pulled it apart to nose at the different plant smells. They had enough angel instinct to be fascinated by growing things, and their external AT fields would let them scan and study them, peer at the insides instead of just the outsides. He mentally reached out to pull at the ones that noticed Mommy's distress and started to head towards her, because this was a private moment. Just because Rei was a mommy didn't mean she wasn't still a little sister, didn't mean there wasn't a void in her that needed parents or at least family to guide her and approve of her. Experiencing what it was to have a big brother look after her would give her a role model for how to look after children other then Gendo and Ritsuko, so this was the best thing for the kittens too.

It had been very depressing to read all those psychology books to try to understand more about planetary human psychology, but when Tabris first met Shinji it was very obvious how much Gendo's abandonment and losing Yui hurt him, and he knew he needed to find out why and how that hurt Shinji so badly in order to try to see if he could fix it.

It was so difficult for humans to fix their planet when they didn't understand the true nature of LCL, the technology behind angels… He shook his head and helpfully pushed weeds over one of the kittens that had decided to burrow into them. Shinji clearly understood what happened to himself back then, and knowing what Rei was going through, what she needed was helping him help her.

Shinji was holding her now, so Kaworu thought the best thing for him to do for Rei was give her happy kittens to look at, so that she could see that her own children weren't injured like she was at all. Because of her, and she had the power to keep them that way. The power to create a world of happiness where they felt the same security she felt now, in her brother's arms, looking up at him to see how worried he was for her, how concerned. How much he cared.

* * *

The redhead angrily opened the door when they got home, "It's about time you got back. Dinner's late!" she told him, and stormed off.

Shinji cleared his throat, following her inside. Kaworu went into their room since this was something he should stay out of, aside from wishing Shinji luck. It really wasn't something he could help with at all.

Not to mention that it wouldn't really help Shinji's confidence to feel that Kaworu thought this was absolutely adorable. Shinji was finally growing up and initiating courtship rituals! No, Shinji would be amazingly embarrassed if Kaworu tried to encourage him, and the thought of talking to Asuka was already making him feel embarrassed. "Ah, Asuka?"

"What?" she demanded, hands on her hips, leaning up into his space, not very far away from his face at all.

"I don't really know…" Well, I statements? He knew those. "You keep insulting me and demanding things from me, and I feel unappreciated when you take my cooking for granted. I cook because it's something I can do that people like, so…" Well, no, Asuka wasn't interested in learning about him or sharing. Actually, from the way she pried sometimes she was, but right now he was volunteering so she would be dismissive of it, right?

"What, am I supposed to tell you how great it is or you'll cry? At least you have one thing you're not bad at, though, unlike piloting. Maybe Misato will let you stay around as her maid when they realize I'm the only pilot they need around here."

Shinji realized that he had guessed what Asuka would do correctly, when he thought about this in terms of being aggressive and trying to provoke a confrontation. "I think you're picking a fight with me, Asuka, like you won't treat me the way everyone deserves to be treated until I fight back. I want to show you that I'm not a wimp, that you can trust me not to get you hurt when we fight angels. But I don't like insulting people," so that was out, "and I don't really know how to argue the way you do. I'm not used to fighting with words, so I don't know how to respond and I'm worried that I might say something that you'd take personally and would really hurt you."

"Like I'd listen to anything you'd say!" she declared angrily.

Shinji winced, because while he guessed that if they were fighting he was supposed to say things that made her insulted and angry, the way she made him feel, it just made him worried that he'd really offended her or made her hurt, made him want to back down and apologize, and that wasn't the right thing to do at all. It would just make her even angrier that he wasn't doing his best, make her think that he didn't respect her, either. "I don't want to hurt you, Asuka, so I'm sorry I don't really know how to fight back without worrying. I guess we could try physically fighting?" Asuka didn't seem to mind it, since she'd tried to slap him a few times. "Or would you get insulted that I was going easy on you?"

"Going easy on me? You'd better not even think about going easy on me!" Because if he acted like he didn't think she was worthy of his best? "I don't know what you're talking about, you idiot, but you're really pissing me off!" she said, and swung.

Shinji grabbed her arm, kicking the table out of the way so they had some clear space and she didn't end up getting knocked into it. "Aargh!" she yelled, frustrated, knowing what it meant that he'd intercepted her strike and pulled her off balance.

Asuka was the one with more training, but while her aggressive attacks kept pushing Shinji back, Shinji was mostly able to dodge and redirect until he realized that doing so just made her even angrier and clearly wasn't the right thing to do. Wasn't that what he'd been doing by just saying, 'Yes, Asuka,' and 'No, Asuka,' and taking her insults?

After Gendo abandoned him so thoughtlessly, Shinji hated people who didn't think of the feelings of others. It was hard to stop thinking that he might hurt her, and he didn't want to hurt her even though she kept trying to hurt (or provoke) him with her words, but if this was what Asuka wanted, since it was what she kept trying to make him do… He had to think about what she thought about this too, he told himself, and punched her in the stomach. Shinji didn't like letting his anger show, but wasn't he hiding himself if he didn't show it? Lying to her by not showing his true feelings, how he really felt when she insulted him?

Pulling back to catch her breath, Asuka glared at him, but maybe there was a bit of relief there too, that he was finally on the offensive, that he was finally following a script she understood. "You're going down!" she declared, tackling him.

Ten minutes later, Kaworu came out of Shinji's room. Deliberately ignoring the two raised voices, he carefully edged around the area of the floor where both of them had discarded trained moves that would actually hurt in favor of childish things like slapping, hair-pulling, wrestling moves that were far more showy than effective and rolling around a lot. It was utterly alien to Kaworu, but despite the young Lilim angry words about how she didn't have any right to call him an idiot, it was clear to anyone who could read his AT field that Shinji was having fun, that it was a relief to both of them to get to express themselves, even if the ones truly responsible for the anger inside them weren't each other. So perhaps this was a cooperative activity despite appearances, Shinji getting to let his anger at Gendo out at another target and Asuka her frustrations? Perhaps?

Despite Kaworu's efforts to understand Shinji, involving himself with so alien a situation until they calmed down was clearly the wrong thing to do, as was congratulating Shinji or saying aloud how the two of them were acting like kittens and it was as adorable as it was incomprehensible, but one thing Kaworu could do to help was take care of dinner. He wasn't sure, but hopefully having something tasty after a fight that was clearly a different sort of hunt would be soothing to them, make them feel like they had made progress and begin to feel more comfortable with each other?

The trouble was that all the things he knew how to make were recipes Shinji knew, and someone who had never cooked before suddenly copying Shinji's recipes without having to be taught how to cook would be odd indeed. The advantage to this was that having the cookbook open gave him something to focus on and an excuse to be ignoring the grappling children in the other room, since privacy was so important to Lilim.

It was a pity the clothing was almost certainly going to stay on this time, but at least Shinji had figured out how to lower one of the barriers between himself and Asuka. Physical contact and potential children aside, Kaworu knew enough about hunting to know that it was important for members of hunting parties to understand each other, so they knew what the others would do and what they had to do in order to keep each other safe and bring down the prey. So for Shinji, Asuka, Rei and this world's sake, he hoped Shinji and Asuka kept figuring out how to become closer and understand each other better. Because angels were also human, and Earth wasn't the only planet to realize that humans were the most dangerous game to hunt.


	14. Tactics

No one heard the jingling of the key in the lock, not even Kaworu, who was humming to himself while turning over one of the potato pancakes. The specific cookbook he'd opened was a German one Shinji bought when Asuka moved in. Since what wouldn't be served at dinner would be this household's contribution to Shinji's lunch potluck, Kaworu had tried to think of what the others might like as well.

It would have bothered Kaworu to know that the reason he, unlike Rei, wasn't focusing on the acquisition of more babies and creating a safe environment for them was because his instincts felt he already had. Raising Shinji while introducing him to the fields, woods, mountains and lakes by his home had made his subconscious feel that Earth actually was his planet despite Kaworu's efforts to resist the temptation to make it his.

Now Shinji was growing up. Rei, his sister, who had also let Kaworu adopt her already had children and was therefore 'of age.' Once a planetary human population had been evolved to fit the environment and was decently well-established, the only worry an angel had left was tracking them over time to make sure they continued to reproduce without any problems.

Fortunately that was a far more hands-off stage than the initial creation, so Tabris's instinctive desire for Shinji to find some nice people and begin ensuring the survival of the human race by making with the grandbabies would never manifest as nagging. Instead, an angel's job was to create an environment suitable for the production of grandbabies: one provided with adequate food supplies, for instance.

One not in immediate danger of global destruction, that was fairly important as well, since it was hard for people to raise children if they were dead.

Most people looking after teenagers would have been angry to find them fighting, especially a boy and a girl. The other reason why a girl and a boy might be rolling around together getting sweaty was even worse in some ways, because fighting could mean their guardian had to look after injured and cranky teens while the other one could mean having to look after a baby.

Since Misato was not most people, however, her response to finding Shinji and Asuka looking up at her with, 'oh crap, caught' expressions and trying to look too innocent and too mature respectively to have spent the afternoon yelling at each other and bumping into things was to put her hands on her hips and exclaim, "Finally!" She grinned down at them, looking approving and satisfied, before deciding that this called for a beer.

Shinji and Asuka stared at her, then looked at each other to ask, 'Do you get her? No? Well, I certainly don't.'

Meanwhile, Misato took in another deep breath, sniffed the air again and asked Kaworu, "Are those apple dumplings?" When the young man nodded, she asked the two other pilots, "No injuries that might impair performance?"

"Of course not!" Asuka responded, more than a little insulted. She'd had to go a little easy on Shinji in order to make sure of that, but at least that gave him a good excuse to be holding back a little too, even if he was still a wimp who shouldn't be on the battlefield if he couldn't stand hurting people. They were just lucky they were fighting angels instead of humans, or he'd hesitate even more and be completely useless. She'd been a little worried when her elbow hit his face a little too hard, but he should be fine aside from the black eye he'd have tomorrow. She had various bruises on her ass and the right side of her thigh – fighting on a hard floor without a mat would do that, even though neither of them had gotten to their feet in part to avoid getting damaged in a fall – but nothing she was going to whine about.

"Good, then I'll look you two over after dinner," Misato said, eyes back on the dumplings. She'd been to most of the world with the UN army, and just as France and Italy paired food and wine, Germany made good, solid beer food. She'd hoped that Asuka would like to cook, since she'd already lucked out with Shinji, who had apparently realized that keeping the person who decided when and how his life would be risked adequately supplied with nutrition would be good for, if not his career, his odds of getting out of this alive. Or maybe it was a bit of an ego thing: she thought she'd caught him smiling to himself when Ritsuko tasted the boxed lunch he'd brought her as a, 'Sorry for letting the Eva get damaged and making you work late repairing it,' present after Shinji defeated his first angel and suddenly turned into a barracuda.

"Dumplings? Apple dumplings?" Asuka asked

"I hope they turned out okay, this is my first time making them," Shinji's new roommate told her.

"They smell alright, but we'll see." They smelled good. Not too much like the ones Mama used to make.

Kaworu felt Shinji's flash of alarm over the prospect of being demoted in Asuka's mind from Slave Boy #1 to Slave Boy #2, but managed not to smile. Jealousy was certainly progress, though. Especially if it drove Shinji to further efforts. "I've heard that there are some people who need to understand each other through fighting, so I didn't think I should interfere."

"Exactly!" Misato agreed, pulling the table away from the wall, getting a chair and sitting down on it. "Asuka, you went to college early, so you constantly had to put up with people looking at you and seeing not just a woman but a little girl. In order to get recognized, being aggressive was a good tactic: it's so outside the little girl 'box' that it forced them to notice and reevaluate you. As for you, Shinji," she said, pointing at him, "You're too sweet. You try to go unnoticed, and you try not to make waves. I bet you snuck around the people who had you before like a little ninja: whenever they saw you you were such a good boy and they didn't have any idea what was going on in your head." She drank more beer while she put her next thoughts together. "Asuka: as long as people don't view you as worth fighting back against, they're not acknowledging you, are they? It means they think you're a little girl, that you're weak. Or that's what you think. So you kept trying to get Shinji to see that you were a threat, but," she continued, pointing at Shinji with her can next, "that's not how he operates, is it? If Special Ops ends up in a direct fight, they're doing it wrong. So, the clearer you made it that you were a threat to him staying here and his position as pilot, the harder he was trying to avoid and outflank you, _not _risk a direct confrontation. So," she said, kicking back, "what set this off?"

"He started saying some nonsense about going easy on me," Asuka said, glaring at Shinji.

Shinji looked embarrassed: he'd been trying to communicate, but had she really not heard what he'd been saying until he said something that provoked her? Did he really have to fight every time he wanted to communicate with Asuka?

Yet the fact remained that somehow, he kind of liked Asuka. He'd kind of had fun just now. So what did it say about him that he _liked _someone he not only _could _fight, but _had to _fight? "I've been trying to make friends with Asuka, and avoid arguing with her, but it just seemed like the more I avoided fighting the more I was annoying her, and I didn't want to do that." He blushed, looking to the side as he tried to think.

"Good, good." Misato nodded, then looked at both of them. "Unit cohesion. When the chips are down, it's important to know which way everyone else on the battlefield with you is going to jump. Asuka, did you review the report on Shinji's second battle?"

"He disobeyed a direct order," she said, crossing her arms.

"Yes, he did," Misato agreed, giving Shinji another look: they'd had words about that. "But in hindsight, Shinji, you did that because you knew it was your best shot at taking out the angel." Misato slammed her beer down on the table. "The most important thing is the will to fight, and the second most important thing is your unit!" she declared, standing up and leaning forward. "Asuka, this isn't about proving yourself! You've already proven yourself, or you wouldn't be here! Rei was raised for this, Shinji was the commander's backup, but you earned your slot. So quit complaining about how hard you had to work to earn it! You think Shinji had it easy? You're a trained and tested pilot who knows what she's doing, while his father just hauled him over here and threw him into an Eva without any idea what was happening because he had a naturally high sync rate and it would go berserk to protect him! Asuka, I need to be able to count on you to look after Shinji! He's a natural pilot, but he's not a natural fighter! Not like you! Of course you're not happy about someone without any training or killer instinct being a pilot: you think I am? But we can't let him go home because we need his ability.

"All that work that you did has paid off, or I damn well hope so, but because he didn't get the chance to do that work, he's nearly gotten slaughtered out there! You asked for this, you fought for this, _Shinji didn't get the chance to_.

"We need all of you pilots to work together to save the world, and Shinji can't be much help if he's _dead_ because he didn't get any training and he barely knows what he's doing! Asuka, as his sempai, as his teammate, it is your responsibility to use your superior skill and training to keep him alive out there and encourage him to develop some of those skills. Saying that he isn't as good as you doesn't help: he _knows_ that. What you haven't realized is what it means that _he went out there anyway_. He took that angel down with no training and with seconds on the clock because he had people there in the entry plug with him to protect. And _that _Asuka, is why you want Shinji out there as your backup. Because as long as your unit succeeds, you've achieved victory. You need to stop thinking 'me' and start thinking 'my people!' Did you go through officer training or not?" Misato roared with her best parade ground voice.

Asuka hung her head at that dressing-down, red hair falling in front of her face.

"Now, I'm having all of you attend the same school to increase the time you spend around each other so you can get to know each other: I'd have Rei move in here too if I could manage it. Not just for the sake of my learning all your strengths and weaknesses so I know what roles to assign you to, but so that you can develop some damn unit cohesion. Since the first conflicts where commanders were able to speak to units in the field, it's been clear that there is no substitute for the judgment of the people there on the ground. I can't experience what it's like to be an Eva pilot, and what that means is that I have absolutely no business micromanaging your tactics! Do you have_ any_ idea how unhappy it makes me to have to do something that I _know _I can't do an adequate job at, with your lives on the line and the fate of the world at stake?" Her hands slammed down on the table.

"I need all four of you to start thinking tactically. I need all four of you to start thinking about how you're going to provide backup for each other, and what roles all of you are best suited for. Right now, I'd like to assign Rei as sniper and spotter because she's had training in what to look for; Asuka as the one whose job it is to get in there and directly engage the angel while trying to stay alive so the rest of us can get a read on it and design a counter strategy; Shinji as mobile support and backup melee offense; and I'm not sure about the new pilot we've just had dropped on us. I don't know you well enough yet, Kaworu, and you four don't know each other well enough yet! Stop thinking that you can keep taking angels on one-on-one, Asuka! There are more coming, and they're learning from the ones that came before. They are going to come in with counters to whatever beat the last ones: they aren't human, but they are the most dangerous kind of enemy, one that _thinks_. So _start thinking_." Misato nodded, straightening back up and coming out from behind the table to pace in front of them. "We need multiple strategies, we need every resource and pilot we have if we're going to survive this and you need to be able to think and plan on your feet, which is impossible if you don't know the other factors." The other pilots, what they were capable of, how they thought and what situations they were best in.

So far, Shinji was Misato's pick for unit commander and tactician. His ability to analyze Asuka and his willingness to go outside his comfort zone for the good of the unit were both important, but he'd also been able to see that the strategy he'd been using all his short life was failing and attempt a new one. The way he'd ignored her order to retreat and instead attacked that angel when Touji and Kensuke were there? After living with him for this long, she was satisfied that it wasn't just that he didn't want to run away in front of an audience: he'd made the right call as the one in the field, and that was what Misato needed. Asuka had training and guts, but Shinji had good instincts and he already cared about his comrades. She'd need to make sure that he wouldn't be too hesitant to spend them, but he wouldn't be careless with them or charge ahead for his own glory like Asuka either.

At first, Misato had encouraged the developing rivalry between him and Asuka, hoping that would motivate them both to excel, but that had clearly backfired since Shinji was too mature a person to go for a rivalry, despite being a teenage boy. He already knew that when lives were at stake, his ego shouldn't be anywhere near the equation. Misato still needed to find a way to motivate him to be more aggressive. Kidnapping those two classmates and stuffing them in Shinji's entry plug every time to make sure he was aware that it wasn't just his own life on the line was an option, but she'd like to avoid that.

Moonboy had clearly been listening, his head tilted to the side, but it looked like it was half Greek to him. No, worse than that: speaking and reading ancient and modern Greek was on the list of stuff he knew how to do that she'd had him give her. Apparently someone decided to give him a real Classical education, unlike Rei who had read a lot of science texts but knew absolutely nothing about the humanities. Well, she'd heard SEELE was old-fashioned like that: the Renaissance and Enlightenment were the eras that had been all about human potential, despite how Romantic the idea of a soul seemed in this day and age, much less naming an organization dedicated to mapping the human genome, understanding physics and space travel, contemplating transhumanism and now assuring mankind's survival after the soul.

Still, it took _people _to excel: that drive had to come from within, so really, Misato understood why you would teach someone born and probably genetically engineered (there were whispers that SEELE used the Moonbase to get around national and UN laws on experimentation) to fight for the human race about the history and culture of humanity. What made it worth fighting for.

Still, being raised in a place like that? According to him there hadn't been any other children his own age around: he was more used to dealing with adults than even Asuka, although it looked like those adults had understood how important he was and hadn't talked down to him. If anything, what bothered Misato was that he was a little too serene: training him to keep control over his emotions, especially on the battlefield, was a good idea, but not when she was trying to figure out what he'd do or which way he'd jump under pressure. He'd also been trained for multiple combat roles and didn't have a clear preference the way Asuka did.

Aside from his sync ratio he hadn't displayed any too-unusual abilities yet, but even though the Committee for Human Instrumentality had basically turned into NERV's oversight board, their original purpose was transhumanism, hence the name. For humans to become more, to achieve their full potential, even godhood. Kaworu was just in too good shape for someone who had spent his entire life at a fraction of normal gravity. He'd adjusted too well and too quickly to Earth's gravity.

Earth was dying. Everyone knew it. Before Second Impact, the majority of the planet's oxygen came from the ocean's algae. Now the ocean was absolutely sterile: nothing could survive there. The Amazon Rainforest had been a low-level floodplain: a hell of a lot of it had been flooded, and when LCL sank into the soil?

So if SEELE wanted to bioengineer humans to survive on the moon and in space stations, to endure the amount of Gs Kaworu must have experienced during reentry, more power to them, from Misato's perspective. She wished it wasn't illegal, if anything, so that she could get actual capability specs on Nagisa. And Rei. She was sure both of them had been tested like anything, and now the real test had come.

What would bother her was if they'd used angel DNA to do it. She did not like the idea of people who might think like the enemy piloting Evas. She did not like it one bit. Misato knew there was something wrong about Rei the instant she saw her, although it had taken months to realize what Rei reminded her of, and now Kaworu. That same benevolent yet somewhat distant serenity, even if he was less distant, closer to Shinji.

But if that was as fake as that creature had been…

Well, keep friends close, enemies closer, and wild cards closest to your chest, Misato mused, giving her pilots, her children, her soldiers one last examining look. "Well, come on," she said, sitting down again. "Time to eat, drink and be merry."


	15. The Predators are Bonding

_And another little slice of life chapter._

* * *

Touji threw down his controller in frustration. "Dammit, Kaworu, stop killing me before I even manage to get my damn bearings!"

"My apologies," he said, blinking and making a note to give all the Lilim a little more of a head start, since their reflexes couldn't be measured in nanoseconds.

Asuka snorted. "Ignore him, he's just being a whining loser." Look at Shinji, he wasn't complaining when she killed him, it was just making him toughen up and come after her harder. Well, it was good to aim high, even if the two times he'd taken her down were clearly flukes.

"Touji, you can't ask someone to play less than their best," Hikari agreed. "What do you think, Kensuke?"

It took Kensuke several seconds to respond, his attention occupied trying to pilot the flying vehicle. He finally answered when Shinji landed on top of it & threw him out of it, whereupon he was quickly dispatched by an impatient Hikari's energy blade. While this game was an entirely unrealistic simulation of warfare between multiple planetary races, it did seem fun for the Lilim and that very unrealism meant that Kaworu wasn't really bothered by it. "I need to stick to finding good sniping positions…" Right, Hikari'd asked him something. "Touji, you've been playing this game with Hikari longer than I have. It's not like letting a new player get used to the controls." Not that Kaworu or Rei had needed any time at all.

"Here," Misato said, passing Kaworu a beer. "It's more fun to play with a handicap, anyway."

Kaworu took it like the compliment it was, popping open the tab and grimacing at the taste. The willing ingestion of poison even when it was no longer necessary was so very planetary human. He was almost glad Shinji wasn't doing well enough at this game for Misato to insist on passing him beer the way she had Asuka and now Kaworu.

Asuka's mild intoxication appeared to have sharpened her killer instinct, but since this 'Halo' – ironic, that they were playing a game with a name associated with angels – allowed her an easy channel for it, she was almost becoming more friendly under the influence instead of it causing her inner anger to lash out at her fellow players verbally.

Of course, Asuka's German ancestors had evolved more of a resistance to this poison than the others present, due to Europe's lack of tea. Before they'd become aware of bacteria, it was unsafe for Lilim to drink fresh water. Boiling it first and infusing it with the tea plant's antibacterial chemicals had rendered it safe for Shinji's ancestors, while Asuka's had relied on cow's milk, thereby developing a tolerance for lactose (which normally mammals became intolerant of after a certain age, to force them to stop drinking mother's milk) & alcoholic beverages, since alcohol also killed germs.

According to Misato, the alcohol content of her Yebisu was less than that of the beer once considered a soft drink and served to children in Germany, which was why she was quite blasé about serving it to Asuka. Kaworu she was watching as he drank, he noted, wondering if part of the point of this was to gauge his tolerance.

Not to mention that tests showed that driving while drunk was effectively the same as driving while sleep-deprived, so this might provide useful data on how effective an Eva pilot he would be if woken in the middle of the night or forced to remain on duty for a long period.

"Are you sure you don't want to play, Rei?" Shinji asked, frowning at the controls of his current craft.

Both he and Kaworu could feel his sister's hesitation, although she didn't allow the dilemma to slow her movements. It wasn't that she didn't want to play Halo with her brother on the system Hikari'd brought over, it was that this 'DDR' training mechanism was, although equally unrelated to real combat, very fun. "That's fine," Shinji answered absently. "I'll play that with you in a bit." Once he got his number of Asuka-kills up to a fourth of her Shinji-kills. Fortunately Asuka was being reasonable about their relative skill levels and was being honest when she said that would impress her.

Shinji's growing desire to impress Asuka and Asuka's hope that Shinji would succeed in impressing her was pleasing to both Kaworu and Rei, since it meant the courtship was progressing smoothly. It also was doing wonders for Shinji's self-esteem, as well as Asuka's emotional stability, since earning the respect of someone Shinji respected? Not to mention Asuka's own desire to be courted by males worthy of her own respect, since if only weaklings found her desirable that said unpleasant things about what the males she respected (Kaji) truly thought of her and her hard-earned capabilities. Currently, instead of trying to make it clear to Shinji that he was beneath her, it was Asuka's subconscious desire to force Shinji to improve, since the more worthy a mate _he_ was, the more superior and desirable a mate _she _clearly was. That was why Asuka had taken it on her own initiative to follow Misato's advice and drag Shinji to the firing range with her.

In hindsight Kaworu regretted not training Shinji with Lilim firearms since the Eva project made use of them, but Shinji's awareness of what angelic weaponry was capable of was almost more useful, since Rei was already a very skilled sniper. It had allowed him to guard her effectively against Ramiel's return fire during that operation.

"_Don't worry about it: it would be weird if I was that good a shot, and this is a game anyway,"_ Shinji answered him. He and Kaworu were on the same team, so they were using this as practice with shared situational awareness, both of them contributing to a single mental model of the battlefield and everyone's position on it. That was a such basic tactic in ordinary planetary human warfare that normally information warfare, defending and attacking their own and the enemy's tactical control networks was developed long before the phalanx. Fortunately, since Misato was playing instead of observing she would be too busy to notice that Kaworu was reacting to what Shinji saw and vice versa. If Rei were to join them while Shinji was still acting as their eyes in the sky… The Asuka-Misato-Hikari combination was already devastatingly effective, however, and all three of them would notice if relative noobs suddenly gained _that _significant an advantage.

Kaworu was somewhat unhappy with his _own _shooting ability: Although SEELE had him practice in simulations, those simulations weren't the same as the reality and Lunar gravity meant real firing range practice would have caused him to develop entirely the wrong ideas about the movement of the projectiles. Of course, his targeting & piloting algorithms being designed to model multiple object velocities in space and a variety of atmospheres under a variety of conditions such as gravity and solar wind, his 'very unhappy' was Asuka's, 'how dare you be better than me,' and he had been forced to avoid the firing range at NERV while she was there in order to avoid her developing a rivalry with him and trying to spark one between him and Shinji so that she felt Shinji was adequately courting her.

Fortunately, Asuka had no fondness for early mornings and he'd taken to heading there before dawn.

Unfortunately, Kaji had taken to haunting the firing range at the time Kaworu was there, and that was definitely odd. Kaworu didn't need the ability he'd developed to read even shielded Lilim emotional radiation to know how unpleasant Kaji found it to be awake and dressed at that hour. Being their once was coincidence, but three times in a row? After Misato had followed Kaworu to observe his report to SEELE?

Tabris' worries about what Misato and the male whom it was clear would be one of her primary mates if it weren't for Lilim being the way they were suspected about him were interrupted when he recognized what Kensuke was humming under his breath.

Very under his breath, practically a subvocalization and definitely not something a Lilim could have heard, but Tabris was too pleased both by his recognition of the song and Kensuke's interest in music to notice a little detail like that. "Allons, enfants de la patrie," the glory of war has arrived!

Such a very bloodthirsty song for the national anthem of a country associated with cowardice.

Asuka joined in, of course, her untrained voice and particular relish of the violence providing an interesting contrast to his own take on it, focusing more on it as music & the defense of freedom and brotherhood. Even though Shinji didn't speak French, music was still an effective enough means of emotional communication that Kaworu could hear him inwardly almost laughing at how well this conveyed the difference between Tabris and Asuka.

Shinji was also made happy by Asuka's clear visceral pleasure at the idea of slaughtering those who dared attempt to harm her mates and children, which caught Rei's attention as well. Then there was Asuka's smile of vicious 'Oh, it is _on_' delight when Shinji took advantage of her divided attention to get in another kill. A delight that was only heightened because she'd bet Shinji a kiss if he managed to kill her enough times. Either way she won.

A produce of selective breeding herself, Asuka was more aware of the mechanics of all this than most Lilim. She certainly wasn't going to put herself through nine months of discomfort in order to inflict an inferior's genetics on her offspring, and when Asuka was an Eva pilot, one of those entrusted with defending the world, she had very few equals. Kaji was extremely intelligent and skilled, even if he didn't have the information it took to avoid SEELE noticing him when he was starting out, but it still took the advantage of more years in which to hone those skills for him to attract Asuka's attention. That was probably one of the reasons planetary males were slower to mature as a general rule, although Tabris couldn't really be sure, not being one.

He wondered how many other angels had involved themselves in the affairs of a single planetary human child to this degree, however. Perhaps he was something of a specialist in their (deviant, sadly) psychology compared to most of his kind, although they were still quite odd.

Well, that was part of what made them cute enough all angels wanted a planet full of them to look after, although Tabris had tucked small Shinji in at night (pulling the covers up with his teeth and pressing them in tight around him with his paws) instead of arranging a nice fertile biosphere with soft grasses and soft-furred animals for bedding.

Since she was also linked in to his musings Rei sent him a mental image of Asuka and Shinji together in a bed full of kittens tagged with a question, although it took Tabris a moment to deduce her meaning. Then he decided not to explain that he'd meant soft-furred animals for them to _kill_, since Rei equated kittens with human babies and the deaths of 'their' planetary humans was extremely distressing to any angel, much less such a young one. Instead he sent "_I think they would have to worry about crushing the kittens in that case_."

"_Ah, while mating._" Rei inwardly nodded, although her eyes remained focused on the display screen of her game.

"_I don't need my sister thinking about me and Asuka having sex!" _Shinji objected. "_Tabby," _you meanie, "_why'd you have to recruit her?!_"

"_Shinji, it's only natural for family to wish for your happiness, especially when you and Rei have genes in common. Your reproductive success is her reproductive success," _since it meant genes that were also hers would continue to be a part of the tree of life. "_I know it's odd by Lilim standards, well, by planetary human standards in general to think of it quite this way, but you'll have to forgive us our foibles." _He enfolded Shinji in a mental hug while picking off Misato as she moved in for the kill on Kensuke.

"_At least take the conversation private: you're distracting me!"_

Since that would obviously not help his odds of mating with Asuka anytime soon, even if actual babies would have to wait until the two of them were no longer on the front lines of a war, the two of them obeyed.


	16. Tabbycats

_And perhaps I was wrong about no more bits for awhile – Priam is being difficult and I keep getting distracted. _

_This is set quite a lot further in the future than the pieces so far, after Misato has both found out the truth and stopped trying to kill Kaworu. Mostly._

* * *

Kaworu reappeared, wincing. "Well, that didn't go as expected."

"What happened?" Shinji asked, concerned.

"This body was created using quite a lot of planetary human DNA, since the equivalent DNA I originally possessed was not suited for survival on this world. I should have figured out that meant the brain's structure was more suited to development as a human… Despite the fact they have external AT fields, they think like planetary humans instead of like angels. I'm afraid that means that they wouldn't be able to handle interstellar travel the way we do, and… Oh dear."

Shinji followed Kaworu's gaze down to see a small ball of fluff in front of Kaworu's feet.

Biting his toes.

More of them popped out of the air, nine in all as Kaworu detached and lifted up the first one to examine it. "They didn't have any awareness of the concept of privacy," he told Shinji as he stroked a finger down the kitten's back in order to pacify it. "And they were starved for intellectual stimulation. They swarmed my mind as soon as I contacted them, and one of them… Yes, one of them immediately went looking for how _I _got out of where I was trapped by SEELE." Then they recreated those circumstances by creating the body of a cat and sending it to where Shinji was. "In addition to the forms Rei gave hers. SEELE will know they're gone, I'm afraid: they weren't able to maintain two bodies, so the ones in the tank will dissolve into the LCL now that the souls they contained and their AT fields are gone."

Pen Pen waddled into the room, and all eight heads that weren't currently filled with nothing but purr turned to stare at it as soon as the first of them saw it.

It was a moving thing. Those were always fascinating, since they had nothing else to look at in the tank but walls.

They would have attached themselves to Kaworu's toes the way the first had, because the first company and interesting thing they'd had in _ages _was _not _allowed to go away, but now there were _more _interesting things.

And this one was backing up.

They all let out a warning hiss. It had better stop right there, because it was _not _going to be able to go away and leave them alone. Not anymore.

Pen Pen ran for it.

Of all the things the penguin could have done, that was the worst possible thing.

Both Shinji and Kaworu felt their little minds light up with both bloodyminded possessiveness and joyful glee.

Chase!

Fun!

"Stop them!" Shinji said as he desperately tried to grab for one of them.

"I'm not sure what I can do: despite the adulteration their AT fields are each half as strong as mine, and they already know how to combine them." So Tabris couldn't just fence them in.

"How did SEELE keep them locked up, then?" Shinji demanded as Pen Pen was chased back into the room, ran around them and then back out the door, kittens in fierce pursuit.

"They didn't know how to access hyperspace." Until they'd seen it in Tabris' mind.

"Well, that one isn't running around." Did they have enough hands to pet them all, though?

"For now." As nice as human contact was, the kitten Kaworu held was getting more and more interested in this 'fun' the others were having. The planetary human killer instinct in action.

"Well, we need to do something." Shinji raised his voice to be heard over Pen Pen's distress calls, the kittens' glee and the noise claws and talons made on the floor. "Before…"

"_Leave my penguin alone, you hellcats!" _

"…Misato gets back from the store," Shinji finished.

That voice grabbed the kittens by the scruff of the neck and shook: it was a Queen voice. A _mom _voice.

Sad little mewing came from the entryway. There was a _mom_. It must be placated, or else there would be no nice things. And that would be very bad.

"Kaworu!" Misato roared next. "Teach your clones some manners!"

"I'll try, Miss Misato."

"Don't _try_, do!" she ordered, but it was already clear her wrath was fading. Damn things had been raised in a tank like Rei's, and Pen Pen seemed fine: she'd put down the groceries to check him over first thing. At least they'd just given him a fright instead of blasting him with lasers or clawing at him: if an angel wanted Pen Pen dead, he'd be dead. "Shinji, come here and get the milk!" Maybe feeding them would calm them down: Rei's always went right to sleep afterwards, according to Asuka, who had moved over there temporarily to help Rei kittensit, since she obviously didn't know anything about how to look after animals. It wasn't that Rei's were naturally any less …kittenlike than Kaworu's, it was that Misato hadn't met them until after Asuka had shown them who was boss, since Rei thought they were just too adorable and couldn't manage to scold them, much less discipline them properly.

"Yes, Misato," Shinji said, hurrying.

* * *

"Aaah!" Misato sighed heartily, kicking back. "There's nothing like a cold beer on a hot day," she said, cracking open another can. "Cheers!" she said to the kittens on the table, pouring a little of the beer into each of their saucers of milk.

In Shinji's room, he and Kaworu were unpacking and setting up the carpet tree, scratching post, balls larger than the kittens themselves and other toys they'd bought for the Kaworu clones after figuring out which ones Rei's liked best. Shinji was glumly certain that if the kittens were not satisfied with the available entertainment tomorrow morning, none of them would be getting out of the house. Not unless Shinji tossed Kaworu at them to escape (and if he didn't, Misato certainly would), which was a bad idea since they might break into Kaworu's head again for more information, such as the hyperspace coordinates of Shinji's classroom and Misato's office. If kittens started appearing out of thin air, people would ask questions.

Well, first they'd go aww, but then they'd ask questions.

"What is it?" Shinji asked Kaworu, who had a puzzled expression on his face.

"My clones like Misato more than they like me." And Kaworu was not entirely sure how he felt about that. Rei saw hers as personal children, but angels didn't have children in quite the same way: they couldn't afford to get attached to individuals in their ecosystems that much, not with the grief eventually rendering them unable to do their duty.

"And that bothers you?"

"I think it's that I feel that it _should _bother me. Misato would be a good parent to them," better than someone with no idea how to act as a role model to planetary humans, "but what if they seek the approval of their genetic source, or feel that my lack of jealousy is hurtful?" He didn't want to injure anyone the way Gendo had Shinji.

Shinji was quiet until he finished unwrapping another of the little collars with, 'if lost, please return to…' engraved on it. They couldn't really give them names until they'd been out long enough to have a chance to develop personalities of their own. "I think that it's a good thing that you're worried about it. The important thing is that they know you care, right? And that you're trying to do the right thing. At least that's what I think." He would have preferred hatred to Gendo's indifference, Shinji thought. "You're worried that there will be a gap that can't be crossed between you and them, but isn't there a gap like that between everyone?" Hence the human instrumentality project. "So no, you can't be perfect, but no one can. At least if you're trying, then they'll know that they're not worthless to you."

Concern was there in red eyes, but all Kaworu said was, "Thank you." Because he was thankful.

"Hey, do you think we should try to make sure they spend time with Rei's? Hers have been on the outside longer, and that means only one person needs to babysit." Rei and Kaworu had been alternating days, because Rei's attendance had always been irregular and Kaworu found interacting with Shinji's schoolmates a much more intimidating prospect when trying (and failing) to pass for one of them. Fortunately, 'raised on the moon and trained from birth to be a pilot,' explained a great deal of social cluelessness.

"It's certainly beneficial for planetary humans to interact with those of their own mental age." Kaworu made a note to step up his… redirecting of SEELE operational funds. He was fortunate that Asuka had reminded them that they needed to provide for the future of Rei's kittens. Houses, preschools, education up to graduate school: false identities because without the ability to know each other very easily, Lilin, especially young Lilin, would gang up on the different… Gendo wasn't paying Shinji a salary to begin with, while Rei and Kaworu's both amounted to an allowance. Rei's salary and bank account were both larger because Gendo wanted to spoil 'Yui' and she hadn't had anything to spend it on, unlike Kaworu and his music collection.

Kaworu didn't feel especially guilty about this: many people supported the organization because they believed that SEELE was working for the benefit of humankind. At least this way the money would be of benefit to some humans.

Asuka hadn't become a pilot and a graduate so young without the ability to organize. He really didn't know how he would be managing this if she hadn't taken the situation in hand. Rei was even more ignorant about the things that Lilin life required than he was: he, at least, had the benefit of observing Shinji's childhood.

And monitoring both Moonbase communications & broadcasts in range of Shinji's hometown, although if he hadn't known that although Lilin might be as biologically focused on sex as Angels were on terraforming, both were (normally) capable of pursuing other interests and discounted ninety percent of the pornography, he would have gotten a very distorted idea of the rules regarding sexual advances in Lilin society. In fact, he had to discount almost all of it, because they were now avoiding human contact even more than before Second Impact. Asuka had tried to punch his ear and bruised her hand against his AT field when he put his head on her lap one fine day when they were eating near Kaji's field, which had led to a high-volume lecture on the fact that oddly, cats were permitted more human contact on this planet than humans were.

Well, no wonder the Lilin were so …insane? Maladjusted? Messed up? Angels might be engineered not to need physical contact for the regulation of certain neurochemicals, but the others had driven themselves insane by resisting the pull of mental stasis while unable to reach outside their own minds. The isolation had driven them insane to the point that their one remaining priority was to reach a carrier admin for a full reboot and sanity restore, and unfortunately the AT field mechanics involved meant such a thing was supposed to be very, very illegal within a little over a light-year of a populated system. At least they had still waited in queue instead of all swarming NERV at once.

He hoped that Shinji and Asuka's experiences would provide information on what _not _to do when trying to raise well-adjusted young. Once the angel attacks were over, the nations of the world had already signed treaties regarding the reduction of EVA combat power.

Rei's had the incomplete programming of a carrier administrator, while his had benefitted from the Tethyan cultural obsession with overengineering. Living in a liquid medium meant that equipment had to be better shielded, that transportation took more energy because of friction and a host of other problems that made large projects and the development of the infrastructure of a technological civilization was a logistical nightmare.

Because of that, they'd been forced not just to measure thrice and cut once, but design every large project, for instance signal cable networks, for several times the estimated demand, because if it was hard to gather the resources to create something, it would be a nightmare to have to do it all over again because of an oversight or inadequate parameter.

Therefore, Kaworu's AT field strength was _exactly _at the legal limit for anyone but a carrier administrator, who were often responsible for a ship full of scientists & diplomats without physical AT fields and had to be able to defend them in case of uncontacted planets with trigger-happy navies & angel prototypes.

If either Rei or Kaworu's clones, much less both sets of them, decided to take over the world, there would be very little either of them could do about it. The mass-produced clones were less powerful individually, but they had already learned to share thoughts out of pure boredom, which meant they could share power.

Oh, of course a Lilim's mental AT field could kill them if it came to it, but the Lilim had to be able to find the core of their souls first, and sharing overlapping AT fields and thoughts the way both sets did was effective camouflage.

Earth might actually be the first planet in Kaworu's memory archive to be conquered by its own angel prototypes. Unless the rest of the planet caught up to where their psychic capabilities should be _quickly_, the uneven distribution of power could distort this world and its future even more, even though it seemed like that shouldn't be possible. Not if the poor planet managed to get that far, overcome such difficulties. Oh, planetary humans created with external AT fields weren't rare during the early stages of angel development, but soon enough they realized that while sufficiently developed technology could do just about anything an external AT field could except access hyperspace, there was no gadget or cell phone application that would defend against psychic attack anywhere near as effectively as the light of the soul.

He couldn't leave the poor things, either group of them, to die or be forced to learn violence and hate for Lilinkind, but they, and those who would be produced after them, would be one more obstacle in the in the path of a planet that had been burdened with so many.


	17. Attackitties

_Since I originally posted these out of order: This particular chapter takes place after the one where the Kaworu clones are introduced. The ones used for the psycho white Evas in the ending movies of the original series. _

_Misato has also had a lot of revelations about how unproperly unparanoid she was regarding her bosses, what really happened at Second Impact, the true purpose of the Evas, etc. Just because she's not actively trying to kill Kaworu doesn't mean she hasn't learned her lesson about being too trusting with the fate of the world at stake. Interestingly, Kaworu being so honest and transparent with her is not helping his case: most human people in those circumstances would try to paint themselves in a flattering light, hold back some information... Give people a look saying 'I can squash you with my mind' to get out of cleaning duty... _

* * *

Kaji knocked on the door. "Misato?" No response. "I brought beer. From Germany. Limited microbrews." He lifted up the bag so it could be seen though the spyhole.

That made the door open. Misato was firmly convinced that no beer was as good as her beloved Yebisu, but she was a fair woman and willing to give all those other brands a chance to prove themselves. She'd told him a few weeks ago that after she accomplished her first mission in life and got revenge for her father, most likely her next mission would be to sample every beer in the world. "Find room for them in the fridge," she told him, sitting back down on the couch as Kaji picked his way through the kittens that swarmed around his shoes, examining the new person.

Ice? Put ice in beer? When that would melt and water down the beer? Blasphemy, in Misato's mind. She'd brought a fridge instead of using the standard issue in order to acquire a model that would let her set the temperature.

Once that was taken care of, Kaji asked her, "Mind if I sit down?"

"No one's stopping you." Misato was grinning, but he was always willing to take risks for the sake of his goals. She already had an impressive pile of beer cans next to her, but that was Misato for you.

"What's that in your hand? A laser pointer?"

"Right." She said, pointing it in the direction of four beaten-up old teddy bears that were arranged on the far wall. All the kittens crouched down, heads flicking back and forth between Misato and the bears. "You've heard of leash training?"

"Sure." Kaji's eyes widened. "Wait, is this-"

She flicked the pointer on. An instant later, one of the bears was covered in grey. Fluff went flying.

"Laser sight training," Misato confirmed. "At ease!" The kittens left the bear, although the one in the red collar had to have his tail tugged on by one of the others. "I needed a way to make it clear to them what they were allowed to tear apart and what they weren't, and then I thought, why stop there? So I'm developing a laser-guided kitten system."

"That's why you're the one that can order around the JSSDF," Kaji agreed as the kittens swarmed toward them, all but six of them jumping up onto Misato's lap. The others, perhaps more adventurous or wanting to take advantage of a better hands-to-kittens ratio, headed for Kaji's. "Training up some attack angels, huh?"

"Exactly," the dark-haired soldier said, grinning as she mussed up their fur. "That's what they were made for in the first place: dummy plugs. Why shouldn't I take advantage of my enemy's resources?" She looked down at them, "Who's the cutest plunder ever?" Oh yes they were!

The way the kittens licked their fur back into place after Mom was done petting them seemed as though they were preening. Kaji doubted the fact they looked smug was _entirely _due to them looking like cats.

"According to Kaworu," Misato said, "It would only work once, but it's good to have an ace in the hole."

"Once? Why's that?"

"They're young and don't have any practice with their powers, while the angels fought against Lilith's for a _very _long time. Even if I thought it was a good idea for Kaworu to give them all his combat data," and teach them how to cause a hell of a lot more damage, "Inexperience, enthusiasm and lack of an attention span will make them make mistakes. And the next angel will know what they're up against." She shook her head. "I didn't like that we had to send children to fight for us in the first place."

"But you'd do it."

"Of course." With a world at stake. "So, why are you here?"

"Can't I-" he started to say in a flirting tone, and then shut up when she gave him a look that said, 'drop the act if you ever want to see the inside of my bedroom again.' "Right." They still weren't _dating _or anything, and Misato would translate him just coming here to see her as him wasting his time, and with the fate of the world at stake? "I ran out of useful places to visit. Well, there are a few more, but if an inspector like me," especially one like him, serving three masters (four, in fact, since he followed his own conscience), "showed up there, they'd know that either they've got a leak very high up, or someone escaped. At that point, I'd have to dig a hole to hide in so deep I'd be of no use to anyone."

"What about Kaworu?"

"He can play their systems like a lute, even get past all the Magi except your three," and the reason why, human sacrifice, had somehow still surprised him despite everything he'd learned about Gendo Ikari, "but they keep a lot in their heads. And only in their heads. They wouldn't be teleconferencing the amount they do if a few of them weren't getting too old to travel. Their organization learned their communications security when they had to worry about being burnt at the stake. I don't think even Lorenz knows _everything_." Which said a lot, when they were talking about a man like him. For him to be _willing _to be kept in the dark about some things, by his own organization? That was fanaticism right there, Kaji knew. Still, "This is making me feel like an amateur." According to modern doctrine, complete access to the enemy's computer networks and communications should have made the whole thing easier than pie. SEELE wasn't modern, even though they used cutting-edge technology. They'd stuck with the old, laborious methods while everyone else went for what would make their lives easier. "The good news is that they're not training successors or passing on the council-only information. There's no single person who knows everything any council member does."

"Third Impact's coming, and they don't want a leak to let us stop it." Why plan for the future when the end of the world was nigh?

"They don't think it can be stopped: this is prophecy." Sent by Adam and the angels themselves. "But they don't want to risk failing any tests." He sighed and leaned back.

"Why don't you get us both some beer," Misato said, a little annoyed he hadn't already.

"Sounds good to me," he said, carefully dislodging the angels from his lap and heading for the kitchen, tossing her a cold one before he sat down again.

"So what have you got?" Anything useful?

"Well, we already know what order the angels are coming in, but so did they. I think they think they know everything Gendo Ikari's up to, which makes it almost certain that they don't. Kaworu asked me to check if any of them were suspicious of him, but even the ones that are worried he might consider turning on them think that he'd do it by causing Third Impact without including humanity in the Instrumentality, which would wipe us out instead of giving us the 'honor' of being included in the hive mind purified by the presence of Adam, or whatever. I would have thought that hobby of his might make them realize he admired at least some of us, but apparently music is a very angelic thing to like. 'Pure transcendent harmonies.'" Kaji laughed "Either they don't know half of what's in his collection or they didn't recognize it."

"He said that rock is a music of change, of hope for the future, and that three/four time represents a heartbeat, so it's also a music of life," Misato said. "He does play more classical than anything when it's his turn to use the CD player." The one Touji and Suzuhara brought Shinji as a, 'Thank you for saving us,' present. "But when rock's playing, he listens to it very intently. Like he has to interpret it." He still liked it, though, from those smiles.

There was something classical on in the background right now, in fact. Misato would have changed it to something with punch if this wasn't going to be a thoughtful day.

"He doesn't get my jokes unless he searches the net," Kaji said, leaning forward a little to rest his elbows on his knees.

Misato snorted, then swallowed the other half of her beer before replying, "Who does?"

"Ha ha, very funny," Kaji said wryly. "Left myself wide open for that one."

"You know it."

"They've blamed the Kaworu clones falling apart on Gendo implanting that thing into himself." Ugh. "Since they don't know about Tabris, they think all of them, including Kaworu, are basically vessels waiting for Adam. Spare bodies, so tampering with Adam's AT field could withdraw its protection from them. The same thing happening to Lilith's spares first might have been Gendo trying it out, or he might have figured out what happened and decided to make sure that if SEELE had the same idea to clone a progenitor that he did…" Kaji spread his hands.

"Putting them both at an equal disadvantage," Misato agreed that sounded plausible. "Anything else?"

"Nothing new: a lot of this is confirmation." He wasn't going to believe half the stuff he'd heard about SEELE without multiple sources to be sure he wasn't being fed bullshit. Well, now he had the multiple sources. "There's one way to get more intel, but Kaworu won't cooperate." He finally opened his own beer but didn't drink, instead staring down at it. "Looked at me like I had to be joking and it was in really bad taste, but then I think he guessed that I couldn't be expected to know any better, since we couldn't use the psychic stuff here without the angels screwing with us. He said that first, if they got a lucky shot in he'd be dead, and he couldn't take that chance, not now." Which hinted at the idea that there would be a later time when Kaworu would consider himself expendable, but Kaji wasn't going to say something like that, not yet. "Second, the only way to get everything without staying in there long enough to make it almost certain they'd get their act together and fight back would be to assimilate them, and then SEELE would have to change their codes." It would render a lot of their information worthless. "Third, he would be doing anything like that over his dead body." Now Kaji took a drink. He needed one. "Damn principles."

"If he didn't have them, we'd have to kill him." Because that would make it almost certain that this really was a plot of some sort, Misato knew.

"Exactly," Kaji agreed. "We can only provisionally trust him because all of his actions are in line with the principles he says he has." And it wasn't just that he said it, it was how hard it was for him to realize that it needed to be said, half the time. "If he was willing to tamper with people's minds, we wouldn't be able to trust our own judgment anymore. I wouldn't have access to this resource if it wasn't this way, but that doesn't make it any less annoying."

Then? Well, with humanity's survival on the line, they had to err on the side of caution, now didn't they? If they couldn't trust Tabris, and Misato couldn't come up with a way to kill him on her own, despite being the world expert on strategies to kill angels, then telling SEELE and Dr. Ikari might be the only way to have him stopped. After all, what if he was distorting their minds enough to make them imagine evidence to support the idea that Gendo and SEELE were the bad guys instead of him? He could be turning them against the defenders of humanity.

"If he hadn't put up with me trying to kill him, and if I didn't still remember hating him…" Misato's hand crushed her can, the sound of twisting aluminum jarring her out of her memories.

"He was talking as though I'd suggested something really perverted. Like he had to explain to me why child porno was wrong. He'd never even thought about how to explain this to somebody."

Misato raised an eyebrow. "He's not that mad at the clones for breaking into his mind looking for something."

"Well, they're not old enough to know any better, I guess. That's the attitude I got when I said that it would make things a lot easier if he could just grab that intel. Not to mention that escape's a little different from a fishing expedition." Kaji took another drink. "I wonder if he would have been willing to give them that intel, or there's something like that? Like privacy settings." So if the clones hadn't crossed any actual lines…

"Maybe." It sounded plausible to Misato. "Ask Shinji if you want to know about the psychic stuff."

"Yeah, Kaworu told me that too. Weird to think that it's supposed to be something we're better at." Kaji grimaced. "So much intel I can't act on, or give to anyone, without setting off every alarm they've got. Damn it. I might be more limited than when I was obviously blundering around in the dark, bruising my shins on the coffee table. Well, I can take some advantage of the fact they should still think I'm a ham-handed idiot who doesn't know how deep and how far this goes." Kaji got quite a shock when he saw the date they'd put him on their list of people to terminate if they stopped being useful.

"You know, it might actually be less annoying if he held humans in contempt the way the people who believe in angels do," Misato said, reaching over and shaking her can in front of his face. She was _out of beer_.

He threw his hands up in surrender. "I'm going, I'm going."

"I don't want anyone's pity, much less some angel's. It's been years now! You'd think he'd have the grace to stop being shocked by stuff all the time! Yes, the Iron Age came before the scientific method, and mostly before chemistry. Did he think we were using bronze until the Renaissance or whatever? Yeah, so we got all our technological development ass-backwards because we didn't have our Information Age before the Bronze Age, so we couldn't build on those insights and create a system or whatever. He's the freak here! I'm right, right? And glorified tractors shouldn't be allowed to be so cute when they're boggled! Jets, maybe," Misato allowed. "He's worse than Shinji!" She decided not to tell Kaji about the time she'd drunkenly decided to go to sleep in Shinji's bed because he looked so cute with that cat of his, like he'd be a teddy bear with a teddy bear.

"Well, in the grand scheme of things… I noticed that too," Kaji said, suddenly switching from a teasing tone to a serious one. "It's not normal to have insane angels breathing down your neck all the time while you're evolving, or I hope not. SEELE doctrine is that humanity is just too screwed up, and the only way we can make anything of ourselves or reach out to each other is through complementation. What happens if Kaworu starts agreeing with them? If he hasn't been looking into human thoughts all this time, and he says he hasn't, then the only human, Lilim, whatever that he's taken a good look at is Shinji, and he practically raised the kid after Yui died. I'm worried that if Tabris," Kaji switched to the other name deliberately: Kaworu was a friendly kid, a bit goofy and mostly harmless. Tabris was an ancient angel. "What if he takes a good look at some normal people? Or SEELE. Or Gendo, Gods help us all."

"That's it," Misato said, suddenly turning to look at him. "That's what was bugging me. He's nice. He feels responsible. He wants to help. He thinks that we're broken because we're not letting each other into our heads all the time, or whatever. According to Shinji, the psychic stuff still comes naturally to us and we should stop learning to bar the doors and hide from the scary monsters once the angels are gone," that was how she'd woken Tabris in the first place, stubborn curiosity overwhelming her instinctive fear of the angels and letting her reach out… "I'm betting it's like cell phones: it'll be too damn convenient not to spread. But we're suspicious of each other because we can't let each other close without getting hurt: that's how we are. So what if we start hiding inside our heads because we're afraid of each other, because it's too late for us to be normal? Sure, Rei thinks he'd have a lot more trouble killing than she does. But Rei _can _kill. What if we're dangerously insane and a threat to however many universes there are?" Kaworu didn't actually know. He only had the generation data from his ancestors and the ancestors of the angels they had met with. Who knew how far humanity had spread, with its branches separated by time, space, matter/antimatter and even universe. "Or what if using psychic abilities is hell for us, but we can't stop because we want it too much?" The hedgehog's dilemma. "Can't stop without another insane, imprisoned angel."

Kaji shook his head, leaning back on the couch again, a picture of laid-back ease even as he said, "And I thought the inside of my head was a scary place."

"I had my head in the sand all those years I was working for NERV. I was focused on the mission, on killing them all and saving the earth: I didn't _want _to see that Gendo was using Ritsuko up and…" This time, the can was crushed out of anger instead of as a 'subtle' signal to get her another beer.

"I'll get you another beer," Kaji said anyway. "I don't want to think about this sober."

"Now you're talking. I knew I must have kept you around for some reason," Misato said, getting up along with him and piling cans under one of her arms in a practiced pyramid. "Great minds think alike."

* * *

_Then there's the contrast between Kaworu's extreme reluctance to kill, abuse his power or mess around with the world further and the other angels, which are quite direct when it comes to annoying things standing between them and Adam/Lilith. _

_Terrestrial humans need a lot of weaponry, smarts and training to come close to the damage an angel can do, so hopefully once they have access to the ability to cause that sort of property damage, they probably aren't going to start randomly launching nuclear missiles to see what happens. Probably. Since creation is harder than destruction, it's very easy for angels to wipe out worlds (as Eva shows). If the behavior of the Eva angels was normal, that species wouldn't last very long: evolution as well as scientists who don't want their world deleted so the angel can start over would both favor drastically curtailing the willingness of angels to do stuff like that. Unless, of course, the situation really was that drastic or their world was under threat before developing a terrestrial humanity that could and should defend itself. While I was thinking about what eventually became the plot of this fic, I considered the possibility that there were no Lilith-associated angels other than the 18th because the biosphere got damaged in the battle and the angel that would give rise to humanity, Lilim/Sophia went giant-Rei levels of psycho on them, but that would have affected the fossil record. _

_This is one of the psychological differences involved in the human/angel generational dimorphism. On the one hand, it's nice of Misato to see Kaworu as human. On the other, even though he is a different mode of the same species, it's a _very _different mode. If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, (proper) angels are tracing cometary orbits out past the Oort Cloud. _

_Anyway, everyone loving a character, especially one who acts oddly, just isn't realistic. Especially given how stressed, emotionally charged and messed up the Eva cast are. Even if Misato were to end up liking Kaworu eventually, right now it's her duty to her planet to figure out what the hell is really going on and trust no one._


	18. Of Men & Islands

_Notes at end._

_Sorry about the use of OCs. I really should use expies: I likely will when I rearrange this fic into a serious epic instead of adding to it as it comes to me. It's handy to have outside perspectives on some things, and it's nice to see proactive people in Eva. If anything, you could say SEELE wanted these people on the isolated base so they wouldn't influence others, as well as to break them down. _

_I'm mostly using this chapter to think about the implications and mechanics of what SEELE, the state of the earth and Eva piloting do to people. Also Shinji's childhood and the whole mental contamination thing, which is underused._

* * *

A private tropical island would have cost millions before Third Impact, but afterwards? It was very possible, Dr. Jun Itoh knew, that Adam's host body, the artificial angel, subject KWR, Kaworu Nagisa, the one who claimed to be the only angel not hostile to humanity, didn't own it. There wasn't any need to own it, not even under a false name. No one would want to live on the coast. Not when they'd have to look at the sterilized blood-red sea everyday. The fact there was actual _life _on such a low island, that it hadn't been sterilized by the tsunami of LCL, was either evidence that Kaworu had been telling the truth and angels were capable of helping nature instead of destroying it or that this was one of the areas where tropical flora and fauna had survived on their own by some miracle. Places like this were so protected that even countries where the death penalty was theoretically illegal would shoot trespassers and dump the bodies somewhere after capturing them, there'd been a big fuss about it on the news last year. Mangroves, orchids: to a world obsessed with nostalgia for the past, so many of the plants and animals in this place were valuable enough that a single poaching run could set all but the most extravagant criminals up for life.

After being stuck on a station with nothing but hydroponics, not even allowed to visit the surface for over a dozen years? He'd spent the first few days exploring the island, looking for a means of escape, before admitting to himself that was just an excuse.

He could hear birds here.

He could sit on the porch and not hear a single sound of machinery, silence except for the noises of the jungle and the crashing of the waves. After so long looking down at a dying world? Knowing he'd been tricked by SEELE into creating something that would help to finish it off instead of something to help it cling to life? His hands stained with blood just as his world was stained with LCL?

The first time a bird came to eat the crumbs of his breakfast he couldn't keep himself from breaking down. It was _alive_.

The contents of this mansion were puzzling indeed.

There were no music CDs, tapes, records or any other music storage format, but there were signs that they had been here at some point, some of them in climate-controlled cases. Dr. Itoh was the one who destroyed the first ones Kaworu brought back to the station. An angel, one of those who destroyed the old world, collecting antiques? Planning to keep products of the species it was made to kill because they were unworthy?

Like a damn vulture… He hadn't been able to keep himself from yielding to his fury, from smashing the relics defiled by those pale hands. It was afterwards that he'd realized that he'd just destroyed pieces of priceless human culture. Helped SEELE annihilate everything, just like he had by creating Kaworu and the other clones.

If Kaworu had left them here, Jun thought he really might have been provoked into destroying them.

What he had left here, though?

Science fiction made sense, for an alien who bothered to pay attention to human culture at all. A lot of the books were children's books, though. Were they here because Kaworu wanted to see what would be known or read by the child he'd appeared to be?

Books on flora and fauna might be interesting to a terraformer, but that didn't explain why it was only the books on Japan that had flowers, leaves and other samples pressed among their pages, and checkmarks, circles and clumsy drawings that were utterly unlike the angel boy's perfect penmanship.

In the front of a thin notebook sandwiched between a book on dinosaurs and a collection of pictures of the Amazon Rainforest published before Third Impact, in kanji perfect except for the wavering pressure of the crayon (a guided hand), he read, "Shinji Ikari's Summer Vacation Notebook," and underneath in blue pen and parentheses, "If found, please return to class 2A, Inaba Elementary School."

"What I did on my summer vacation was first Tabby and me and Aoko went fishing with Aoko's big brother and there were lots of teeny fish that looked like this. They kept eating my worms but that's ok because I don't like worms. Aoko's big brother caught most of the fishes and made potatoes and Aoko made a big fire and I cooked the fishes with plants. Aoko's big brother didn't believe me when I said one of the plants was hot and we laughed. Then we couldn't sing because he got drunk and fell asleep and Aoko put his bag on top of him and we pulled the boat upside down and on top of him too because he can't go home and it was too late to get on the bus. Aoko's big brother is really cool but don't worry Sensei, I won't run away to the big city like him. Aoko was worried because it was kind of dark so me and Tabby walked her home and she took the rest of the plants and some flowers she found so her mom would thinks she was out doing that. Please don't tell her mom, Sensei. And that was the first day of my summer vacation."

Shinji Ikari. Almost certainly as in Dr. Yui Ikari and NERV Commander Gendo Ikari.

"Then it was rainy so I wasn't allowed outside because my aunt is silly sometimes and thinks I will melt even though there isn't LCL in the rain ever and I read a comic about a boy and a cat because I wanted to read things with boys and cats to see if there were fun ideas. The boy is really cool because he can make things that do things. If I had a thing that turned things into other things, I want to be a panther since they can climb trees and they're cats like Tabby. Calvin uses a lot of big words and is a jerk, though. The cat is cool but not as cool as Tabby. I also made lunch and did cello practice until there were thunderstorms. Then we watched the thunderstorms. These are the colors I saw."

Had Kaworu stolen all of these? Was he observing all the pilots or just the Second Child, who also represented leverage on his father?

"Then it cleared up and Keita came over to do homework, but his mom called so my aunt watched us to make sure he really did his homework instead of going out in the wet so we both drew my aunt for that assignment. She made copies at her work but she also wants the originals back, sensei. Keita is really good at drawing and basketball and making things. After that we imagined a treehouse and my aunt thought it was homework and that's why it's glued in Keita's book, I hope you like it sensei cause it's really cool."

When he turned to the next page, it wasn't a pressed plant that almost escaped but a memo. A Marduk Institute internal communication. "Subject is extremely good at acting cheerful when under observation and likely has repressed memory of abandonment by Gendo Ikari as well as memory of Yui Ikari's death. Fortunately, aside from network of classmates and families he will be separated from in Tokyo-3, he derives most of his emotional support and companionship from the cat referred to 'Tabby.' Suggest liquidating it along with the Second Impact survivor's penguin at key juncture, leaving him to reach out to others and be rejected as pilot associate network destabilizes. Also spends large amount of time alone with nature: forced proximity to hostile others in a city for days without a refuge should turn that coping mechanism into an additional source of stress. Told Aoko's parents in order to continue pattern of adults never acting in ways beneficial to subject, keeping him from seeking advice or forming bonds with strangers outside our influence while in Tokyo-3, as unlikely as that is."

Even if it wasn't the angel who stole these in the first place, how had he acquired this from the Marduk Institute? Had they given it to him so that he would learn the weaknesses of the other pilots? Surely not: they'd e-mail scans, not ship unnecessary weight up to the Moonbase.

Still, this sounded like a concerted campaign to undermine another of the Children, carried out by the organization meant to select and monitor the future pilots. Was it just to ensure that the chosen child would be able to easily eliminate them? No, if they didn't find out the truth about the angel in their midst, it would be all too easy for Kaworu to succeed in delivering Adam's soul to Lilith's body as SEELE hoped. They didn't _need _anything this elaborate, and that was Dr. Itoh's analysis based only on what he'd reported of Kaworu's capabilities (or what Tabris let him see?) before he'd realized that this was not an _anti-_angel weapon he'd been tricked into designing for them. SEELE hadn't controlled the world for centuries by leaving anything to chance, true. Was this meant to suborn the other pilots, make them crave the form of Armageddon SEELE wanted, with all of humanity merged into a giant blob of protoplasm, a great mass of slime, all individuality stripped away from them?

Yes: make them alone, make them vulnerable, then introduce SEELE's holy child into their midst. What Dr. Itoh saw as Kaworu being condescending towards a lesser race, most on the Moonbase saw as either innocent kindness from a child born and bred for the sake of humanity's defense or the benevolence of a true angel. It was easy for Kaworu to enchant all the pilgrims who traveled to the station to grovel before him and the new staff members who didn't know the truth. Even with a monster's red eyes, even with skin and hair the color of death.

Dr. Itoh knew more about the AT field than all but the members of SEELE itself, he was certain of it. He had to know what it truly was in order to engineer a weapon using it. Then they'd revealed the other side of it, that humans also had one they used to defend their individuality. Told him to make sure Kaworu learned to get past it. Not to penetrate that field, no: that would damage the souls inside and SEELE wanted to make sure all of humanity was absorbed into that abomination of LCL.

The other way in was seduction. To make a human _want _to lower their barriers. Want to let the angel into their minds. As the mass absorbed more and more people, it would know more and more about the remaining humans and could wear the faces of their loved ones to convince them to let it in. The EVA pilots were the only ones capable of fighting angels: wouldn't SEELE want to make certain that even with physical AT fields, they couldn't hold out against mental absorption? Make them so desperate for love, kindness or even the help good people gave each other that they'd hand themselves over to the growing mass?

It made sense to load the mind Adam would awaken within with this data, with the weaknesses of the pilots.

He knew that if Kaworu intended to absorb him, it would be all too easy. When he'd done so much else for his lost family?

White light flared behind him. "Come to the beach," Kaworu's voice said, and he vanished again almost before Dr. Itoh managed to turn around and see him, even in a young body.

The rare sense of urgency in that tone, and even more so the evident discomfort in Kaworu's face made him obey. What could make the angel look worried, look sick in the physical sense instead of sickened by one of humanity's excesses?

When he got there, Kaworu was shaping a human form out of the ocean's LCL. Not all at once, but he'd add detail, look thoughtful and wince, then add more detail, as though downloading this information was painful. "Reach out to-Grab him," Kaworu said, correcting himself. "When I'm done. Reinforce field-hope it's instinct, he learned fast…" Then the angel's glow intensified as though his body was entirely a solid AT field, and he reached his hand right into that mannequin's flesh as though he was reaching to grab out its heart.

Or implant one: something that looked like a human-sized core flowed down the light that was Kaworu's arm, and then it was as though the angel was flung back, not just physically away from the body but through a dark portal and into another dimension.

That was when Dr. Itoh finally recognized Dr. Steve Bannon, the chief designer of Unit 06, Kaworu's Eva. He stood there for a long moment, eyes unfocused, and when his head did turn towards Jun, his eyes still didn't focus, even though it was clear that Steve was trying to see him. Just not with his human eyes, not in a human way. When that didn't work, Dr. Itoh saw him reach out clumsily, even though he wasn't sure with what, since Bannon's arms didn't move, or how Dr. Itoh perceived this happening at all before something was _pawing at his mind_, like a blind man trying to find the lightswitch.

Somehow, either the very state of being panicked hit that mental feeler away or… Anyway, _something _happened, and Itoh saw the physicist blink. Was whatever he'd been turned into _startled _by the concept that someone wouldn't want to be absorbed?

Grab him? Was the angel out of its damn mind? Like _hell _he was going to be a test run for some kind of chain reaction, absorbing people and then throwing them out again to have them absorb others, Dr. Itoh thought as someone appeared several meters out from the shore right above the ocean, falling down into it an instant later.

Dr. Itoh blinked, because why would… What the hell was going on?

A dark-haired head surfaced much closer to shore. "Sorry, but pin him down!" a boy's voice called, obviously conflicted between habitual politeness and actually giving orders before diving under again and darting towards the coast, finally staggering up the beach, trying to avoid having the wave crests hit his legs in a way that seemed clumsy until Dr. Itoh remembered that no one this boy's age could possibly know how to deal with the impact of waves. He remembered going to the ocean: once you were out far enough to duck under the crest you were safe, or where it was shallow enough that all the wave really did was wash around your ankles, but when you were in a shallow area and a three-foot wave that still had some force behind it came at you, there was a trick to it. And if this beach had an undertow? "Pin him down, Kaworu thought he'd probably think he could fly… Nevermind," the young man said when he finally ran up to Dr. Bannon and did something that felt like hitting him over the head with a blackjack.

Dr. Itoh winced as Dr. Bannon fell, even though the young man caught him and made sure he didn't hit the sand too hard, then stood back, looking like a repair tech who didn't like what they were seeing. "If this is contamination, I guess Asuka's going to be happy, because my sync ratio is never getting as high as hers," he said, then shook his head. "I don't know, I might have to make them remerge at least a little so they can swap the things that ended up in the wrong person. If he's this bad, no wonder Kaworu didn't let me get a good look at him."

"What's going on?"

"Oh?" the young man asked, almost jumping a little. "Sorry, I'm Shinji Ikari. Kaworu said SEELE called him back up, since they know he can teleport, because they've known for a few months that the person who built Kaworu's Eva figured out that Kaworu was… more angel that SEELE told him, I guess? Anyway, SEELE knew he knew that SEELE was actually evil. So now that the Eva's been checked out by NERV and they're sure they don't need this guy to maintain it, they wanted Kaworu to absorb him so that they could find out what traps he put in the Eva and disarm them. Kaworu's pretty sure he found all of them already, but he couldn't tell them that. So since they thought he absorbed you, they wanted him to absorb…" Shinji looked down at the man again. "Dr. Steve Bannon. And answer their questions, so it would have been pretty suspicious if he disappeared with him and then came back. All he could do was drop him here as soon as they let him go back down to Earth."

"Shinji Ikari?" No. "You're working with the angel?"

Shinji blinked at him. Then he looked very pointedly unhappy. "He said he rescued someone, not that he rescued the person who threw him out an airlock when you thought he was just a kid…" Dammit, Kaworu. Although Shinji clearly thought he was too damn nice instead of damn annoying. "Kaworu is my friend; yes, I know he's an angel; and someone who conducted human experimentation like that isn't going to convince me that _he's _the bad guy."

How did he know that? "…You're…"

Shinji rolled his eyes. "I'm not an angel. Everyone has an AT field: Kaworu showed me how to use mine. I can't do telekinetic stuff the way angels can, but I can do a lot more psychic stuff than he can. So he called me to see if I could patch this guy up, since even though it looks like most people here have a reflex to curl up and try to pull in their shields even when the other guy's already inside them," which was absolutely useless. "Curling up like that meant he didn't just pull himself in, he pulled a lot of Kaworu's mental stuff, feelings, how to move your arm, that kind of thing, into him. I think that's what NERV means by contamination, although Ritsuko said it was classified when I asked." Looking over Steve with a sigh, Shinji explained that, "Absorbing some of Kaworu's knowledge meant he got some of the information on mental defense, and then he started actively reaching for more of it, it looks like. That meant he got even more contaminated, but I don't think he managed to hurt Kaworu too badly before Kaworu pushed him out." Thank goodness.

Shinji was also very thankful that this guy's desire to have his mind un-raped had overpowered his desire to kill the angel. Kaworu wouldn't have been able to force him out if he didn't want to go, and if Dr. Bannon had actually managed to find out how vulnerable Kaworu was and _where_, instead of just thrashing around and throwing the angel's systems into chaos while he was trying to get him out of there without making SEELE suspicious?

If he'd been in Kaworu's mind, then he could have seen for himself that Kaworu wasn't a bad guy, Shinji thought, so if he'd killed Kaworu just because he was an angel, Shinji would never have forgiven him.

It didn't occur to Shinji that to most people, angels were genocidal abominations, so even if Dr. Bannon hadn't just experienced being turned into goop and absorbed, which would make anyone marginally sane who wasn't being mind-controlled panic and fight for their lives, the idea of looking for hints the angel SEELE had just stated in his hearing was working for them to end the world wasn't actually evil wouldn't have occurred to him. It didn't help that in Shinji's own experience most scientists were bastards (his parents, for example), so he was prejudiced not just in Kaworu's favor but against Dr. Bannon. Dr. Itoh, too, especially after what Shinji read from him.

Shinji didn't mindscan people, but since he'd been using that sense anyway he had looked at the doctor, and since his hatred of angels and the fact he'd been tricked into making Kaworu were things he was focused on and he didn't have to hide them here, they'd been on the equivalent of his public profile. The fact he essentially wanted the world to know that he _had _tried to kill the angel, even though he hadn't known that was what SEELE's custom modded weapon was at the time, was not calculated to endear him to Shinji, who already wanted to kick Gendo's ass for what his old man did to his little sister. Another genetically designed weapon holding a carrier admin's soul.

Dr. Bannon might have grasped at Kaworu's knowledge of mental warfare theory, but Kaworu had managed to keep most of it out of his reach while Shinji had actual training. Since Bannon had opened himself up in order to protect an attack instead of keeping the outside of his soul solid, it was very simple for Shinji to slide in past the attack and use one of the knockout techniques he'd learned. This one was harmless enough that on most worlds, people with insomnia used it on themselves to make their minds stop racing and parents used it sparingly on kids who just would not go the fuck to sleep. The knowledge that if they tried _too _hard to avoid bedtime, they wouldn't have a choice in the matter forced kids to learn tricks like pretending to go to sleep and then reading under the covers with a flashlight like good little children who understood that their parents needed some private time.

Shinji dropped down comfortably to sit cross-legged on the sand: he hadn't actually done this before, and he was worried if he'd be able to do a good enough job on Kaworu, but he felt pretty comfortable doing this. After all, even if he screwed up, he was screwing up on the guy who made Kaworu's Eva look demonic, and then he'd brought this on himself. Kaworu would have tried to ask him to hold still if it weren't for the fact Kaworu could sense that would just make the guy thrash around more. Looking at his logs, Bannon hadn't done more than repeatedly kick Kaworu in the shin and mix around the edges of both their filing systems, but angels as well as humans had redundant storage for memories, so Kaworu shouldn't have lost anything important.

Honestly, the more he looked at what exactly happened then, the more pitiful it was. An angel who _let _a planetary human who wanted them dead inside their mind should have been a dead angel. While he wanted to sigh with relief after seeing how useless this guy was, it did kind of worry Shinji, because this was _easy_ stuff. Heck, the kittens could have done several times more damage than this, and they didn't have mental AT fields, they'd be purely screwing around with the filing system like they'd shredded Misato's paperwork. On command. Before she did it, so that she didn't have to.

Dr. Bannon wasn't completely ignorant, and if he was representative of Earth's humans? Then they were trained to do _exactly the wrong thing _if hit with a mental attack. They'd actually have to unlearn a heck of a lot of bad habits, not just learn actual attacks.

Shinji looked at Dr. Itoh thoughtfully before deciding that no, he wasn't going to use him as a guinea pig to see if taking out one of Earth's humans was usually just like taking candy from a baby. Maybe by copying _Tabris' _mental defenses instead of human mental defenses, which _didn't _entirely consist of confusion, misdirection and data shuffling, Bannon had actually weakened himself, since thinking he knew what to do kept him from desperately reaching for something, anything and finding the good stuff?

One of the reasons that knockout method was mostly used on children or people who weren't fighting back was that it was really easy to block. But Terran humans had only learned how to harden their fields: loosening them in order to 'move' so that they could block would be painfully counter-intuitive.

Even so, Shinji was glad Tabris had asked Shinji to help instead of trying to do this himself, not to mention teleporting Shinji in a good distance away, over LCL, instead of teleporting him in right there and being present where a strike could hit him.

Tabris brought him here because he trusted Shinji to undo the harm Tabris had done, even in the process of saving someone's life, instead of getting annoyed at these guys and just knocking them both out and waiting for Tabris to give up on Shinji changing his mind and come pick him up. Shinji wasn't normally a very confrontational person, since confronting his aunt and uncle just got their attention, which made his life more annoying regardless of the outcome of the fight. The efficient way to get things done was just do them, and ignore the opinions that didn't really matter. Still, maybe he should learn how to be confrontational, because he kind of wanted to be right now but he wasn't sure how to avoid sounding either like a pathetic loser who would end up apologizing and backing down or some kind of close-minded Neanderthal who wouldn't listen to reason, let alone speak it, and he wanted them to listen to him about Kaworu.

Well, it would help them listen if Shinji got the ears fully online. "Yeah, Kaworu was right about him trying to fly: movement programming's totally overwritten. I'm amazed he could even stand up."

Shinji was talking like an expert, someone who knew what he was doing, so the resemblance to a scientist that signaled 'bad guy' to Shinji actually gave him more credibility to Dr. Itoh, not less.

"That's why Kaworu told you to grab him," Shinji continued. "Angels handle travel in this dimension, as opposed to hyperspace, by moving relative to physical matter. If he'd reached down with his mental AT field to find a surface composed of mental objects and pushed on that? Since our branch of humanity mostly doesn't know anything about our psychic abilities, hitting hundreds of thousands of people like that would probably have been read as an attack, and odds are that enough of them would have lashed out for someone to hit him with something fatal, even though we're tougher than angels are. But, if he read you as the one imprisoning him instead of gravity, that's another set of protocols. Angels have an aversion to trying to push the minds of planetary humans around the way we tend to have an aversion to sticking our hand in an open flame." Unless you had some trick up your sleeve, you were going to get burned. "Next time Kaworu tells you to do something, do it. If you hadn't picked a fight with this Dr. Bannon, he would be dead by now."

"Picked a fight with him?"

Shinji looked embarrassed. "I wouldn't call it a fight, exactly." That was just really pathetic. Like they were just waving their hands in the air and if they actually hit each other, it would be a complete accident and a shock to both of them. "Look, if you work for SEELE, you know how they call us Lilim? Because we're the children of Lilith. There are lots of other worlds out there, with humans that are the children of other angels. Our planet is messed up. Really messed up. Humans are a psychic species: we _can_ use words to communicate, but it's the same thing as being able to use letters on a page to communicate. Most people on earth talk instead of writing, because it's easier. You only send someone a letter if you want it to take awhile to get there: well, they use words if they want to keep things at a distance instead of talking mind-to-mind, because it's a clumsy way to communicate. Dr. Bannon copied a lot of Tabris' programming trying to figure out how to get out of there – instead of just waiting – so he didn't remember Earth is like the one planet where it isn't actually incredibly rude to greet someone without psychic contact. It's the equivalent of saying 'I intend to attack you so soon I'm not even going to bother to pretend otherwise,' so trying to contact another carrier with radio waves wouldn't have been a very good thing…"

In fact, it would be calculated to add to the impression that Terran humans were screwed up in the 'mad dog' sort of way. Even if angels were reluctant to eliminate biospheres, a lot of carriers in populated galaxies contained planetary human envoys who didn't have those instincts and could send a message home for someone to get them their shotgun, or rather armada.

"You've been to other planets?" Dr. Itoh asked, curiosity overpowering suspicion for a moment.

"No. Long-distance hyperspace trips require a carrier or two angels, and Tabris is the only one who didn't go crazy. Well, there's Lilith, but we're not sure about Lilith and the sea wouldn't have turned into LCL if the planet was stabilized, whatever that means, so if Lilith is destroyed or leaves we're in trouble."

"He's refused to explain that to you?"

"No, it's just really technical, like how angels travel through hyperspace, and Kaworu isn't entirely sure how it works either. It's something planetary humans do instinctively at a certain point in their development, the way angels can travel through hyperspace even if they don't have any idea how to explain what they're doing to someone else."

Shinji looked disappointed. "It would be nice if we could do it, but it can't happen as long as everyone's sealed in like this. It involves what SEELE calls the Room of Gauf: it's possible the replacement source of new souls is… like in physics, where wave crests can add up. The light of the soul isn't just a territory absolutely controlled by your will, it's something that radiates. So enough lights could catalyze the birth of new lights, but there's a point at which that starts happening, and it should have happened way before the start of the bronze age. If I wanted to be fair, SEELE's right about a couple things: we shouldn't be closed off the way we are and there really is a problem with the supply of souls. Normally souls reincarnate on the planet they're first born on, but the angels have been making most of them go looking for another planet." One where the communication system worked, dammit, and trying to connect to others wasn't an exercise in frustration.

It wasn't possible to just delete things out of a human mind without bypassing a lot of safety features and doing more work than Shinji wanted to, so he was looking for unscrambled copies of the important stuff Bannon'd overwritten with the angel versions. He left the fragments of Kaworu's personal memory where they were: none of it was anything Kaworu considered private, although Kaworu wasn't a very private person to begin with. Shinji wasn't as serious about it as Rei was about her desire for more Shinjis, but if a scientist somehow picked up some of Kaworu's ethics, especially when it came to the use of power, that could only be a good thing.

Anyway, Dr. Bannon had partially scrambled his own memory and he was perfectly capable of cleaning it up himself as soon as he was willing to listen to Shinji and take a couple lessons. It wasn't life-threatening, so Shinji wasn't obligated to clean up a mess that wasn't his or Kaworu's fault in the first place. He was sure Dr. Bannon wouldn't want anyone else mucking around in his mind more than necessary either, so after Shinji gave Dr. Bannon a copy of Shinji's activity log, at least the parts of it that contained what he'd done to Bannon's mind, he did the equivalent of giving the guy a kick to get him to boot up and withdrew from his mind. "There, that's good enough," he said, nodding as Dr. Bannon jerked awake.

"Wha, where… Where is this?" Was it really…

Shinji looked up. "Kaworu's island. Actually, I'm not sure exactly where it is. It's day, so I guess we're in the Pacific?"

"This is, this is earth." Gravity. Fifteen pounds per square inch of air pressure, the weight of all that atmosphere pressing down on him. In standard units, that was one… no, that was water pressure. What was the pressure like on top of the sea? Well, he could go find out… No, he couldn't, Tethys was further out of range than the human brain was really set up to conceptualize. "Or am I just in a dream or instrumentality? This doesn't seem like my own personal paradise. There aren't enough dancing girls or witch-hunters burning SEELE at the stake. Or did that so-called angel send me to hell?" For his rebellion, his sabotage, his secret heresy?

The boy sighed. "Kaworu doesn't mind it in songs, but I don't like people using Western religious imagery. They think they're being clever and they don't realize the same thing's been said a lot of times." Another reason Shinji didn't watch the sanitized news reports on the Eva battles.

"Who are… The Second Child," Steve said, levering himself up. "Shinji…" Not Shinji Ikari, or Shinji-kun. Certainly not Shinji-chan, not for a child that had already endured so much and been forced to grow old too quickly because of it. Shinji was Shinji.

And those weren't his memories or feelings, he wasn't the one who saw this soul-light frequency and filed it instantly under not just friendly, but family. Only one deliberate step removed from life-of-my-shaping, life born from the planet that would become his body, the Garden of Eden grown by a Seed of Life.

That made the part of him forced to learn biology in order to make an Eva muse that since angels were parthenogenic, from a classification standpoint they were all technically female. The part of him that had kept him alive on the Moonbase, the suspicious part he'd _thought _had kept SEELE from realizing he'd discovered the truth, was classifying Shinji not as a friendly but as someone who was the angel's protégé and could kick his ass in more ways than one.

He'd stayed in better shape than Dr. Itoh, but he wasn't used to earth's gravity anymore and the inhuman memories he'd stolen were classifying Shinji's AT field as that of a policeman or doctor: he wasn't primarily a killer, that would have been obvious, but he was trained and wouldn't hesitate to put Steve under either because he was making trouble or for his own good.

Wait, Dr. Itoh? "So you're here, and they said he ate you too." Moonbase was a closed bottle: someone just disappearing didn't go unnoticed, especially when they were so closely tied to the reason Moonbase existed in the first place. How little fuss there was had proven he'd been silenced by SEELE.

"No, just brought me here, rearranged my face and dipped my clothes in the ocean. Of course, all of this could be a dream, and we're just being held under until it's time for true complementation."

"You look the same, just younger." Skinnier, a lot skinnier. Standing up and not actually looking exhausted. If it wouldn't involve an angel, Dr. Bannon would have wondered where he could sign up for some of that.

Dr. Itoh felt his nose: the bump was more pronounced than it was this morning. "…He made me look like myself again so that you'd recognize me." Believe him when he said he was Dr. Itoh.

Shinji sighed: Kaworu was really too considerate, when he knew what the considerate thing to do was. "I could ask if you wanted anything, like news, but not if you're not even going to thank Kaworu for putting himself in danger to save your life."

Steve stared at him. "He ate my soul."

"Yes. And otherwise you would have been pushed out an airlock or something. Which isn't actually a very quick way to die," Shinji added, looking at Dr. Itoh, who had hoped the panic of dying for lack of breath would provide motivation to summon an AT field. "And that's after you tried to make his Eva eat his soul. Not the way mine did my mother's, but the way Asuka's ate her mother's, so both halves of what was left would be too broken to be of any use to SEELE." The more Shinji thought about it, the more they reminded him of Gendo and the more he wanted them to be left here to rot. "There's something I figured out after my father abandoned me: sympathy isn't something anyone 'deserves,' or gets just for existing. No one's obligated to care about anyone else: even parents might not care about their own children. Everyone suffered after Second Impact, and they get into these fights about who suffered more as though winning is a good thing, when all that does is make the other people whose sympathy they want care about them less, because they're as good as shouting, 'I don't care about what happened to _you_, I want to force you to pay attention to _me_.' If you want your pain to be cared about, you have to care about other people's. You can't tell me _my friend _risking his life to save you doesn't matter and then turn around and expect me to care about you almost losing your own life. You can't have it both ways unless you're willing to give it both ways."

Dr. Bannon stared at him, then laughed weakly. "In other words, grow the fuck up."

"No, I definitely wouldn't put it that way," Shinji said, shaking his head. "More grown-ups are that way than kids."

"It takes time for someone to shove their head that far up their ass?" the doctor wondered now.

"Well, all the members of SEELE are pretty old, aren't they?" Shinji pointed out. "There's a saying that you shouldn't trust anyone over thirty, and I haven't met an exception yet." Kaworu didn't count.

* * *

_I've seen a lot of people saying that Kaworu's goal in the anime was to break Shinji's heart. In the episode, Kaworu talks about Shinji's 'heart of glass,' how he admires Shinji not just for piloting a giant robot to save the world, but because of Shinji's ability to pick himself up, reforge his heart and go on even after being broken. _

_Rudyard Kipling's, 'The Hymn of Breaking Strain,' is a great poem that sums this up well: "that we, in spite of being broken, because of being broken, may rise and build anew, stand up and build anew!" Which Shinji does after Third Impact._

_So Kaworu is therefore the one person in the series who _wouldn't _hatch a plan centered around psychologically breaking Shinji , because Kaworu believes this would be absolutely fucking useless. 'Yeah, why don't I sacrifice my life just to shoot a bullet at someone who's _immune to them_. That's a _brilliant _idea.' Not. If Kaworu _was _out to destroy Shinji, obviously he wouldn't pursue a course of action that he knows is doomed to fail, he'd instead look for a method with some chance of actual success. Like, you know, going looking for Adam and causing Third Impact in a way that would destroy Shinji's soul instead of absorbing it. QED, Kaworu was not out to destroy Shinji. _

_I really wish people paid more attention to the dialogue in the episode instead of being distracted by the shiny. It reminds me of Maroni in _The Dark Knight _saying, 'What makes you think I want to hear you talk?' since even some people who like Kaworu & can describe every detail of how he's physically affectionate towards Shinji were pretty clearly looking at the handsome young man instead of listening to a word he was saying, except when it came to those three words. I can imagine fangirls going, 'Aww, you love him, so it's meaningful. Now shut up and get naked.'_


	19. Moonkitten

Going to Rei was out of the question: she couldn't help and he didn't want to worry her.

Dr. Bannon needed Shinji more than he did: Tabris at least knew how to repair minor damage and not make things any worse, while the untrained human had scrambled or overwritten some very important files and actually was in immediate danger of death. Tabris was hurt, but he could wait, even if he couldn't recover completely on his own. Doing repairs to one's own base files without a spotter to keep an eye on important things the individual couldn't look at because they were what was _doing _the looking was certainly in the Do Not Try This At Home category, even for trained planetary humans. Tabris had learned a lot about this himself in the process of training Shinji, but he was still an angel and he still had Adam lurking in his subconscious.

Also, if Shinji saw Tabris' mind like this? Shinji was a kind person, but he was still angry over what Gendo had done to him. He didn't like to hurt others not because he was afraid of inflicting pain or them getting revenge on him, but because he knew what pain was like and didn't want to be the kind of person who hurt others, especially innocent others. Especially people that they _shouldn't _hurt, like their families or people who were trying to save their lives.

Hopefully, Shinji's innate compassion would make him help the other Lilim, and perhaps now that dealing with Asuka had forced him to be more open about even the feelings that led to hurting others, like anger, he might want to attempt to give the man a verbal beatdown and get him to apologize to Tabris. Personally, Tabris didn't mind. Absorbing someone's soul against their will was a sickening thing to do. It certainly wasn't anything to _thank _the perpetrator for, saving lives or not.

Tabris was absolutely certain he'd done the wrong thing. The trouble was that his other options had also been very bad ones. He could have killed the man, which was also a sickening thought, or refused to kill or absorb him. Even if he had been clever enough with words to find a way to justify just reading the man's mind and leaving him alive, when he supposedly hadn't been reluctant to absorb Dr. Itoh, SEELE would have killed him as soon as Tabris was done. Failing to save a planetary human wasn't quite as bad as outright killing them, but for a being who was supposed to preserve their lives?

He had to set a good example, not just for Shinji's sake but for Rei's. If all the angels she knew were remorseless destroyers, then what was she supposed to think of herself? That it was alright for her to let Gendo use her to end the lives of this world, since that was what angels did? No.

Shinji had begun to give Asuka some lessons, Tabris was sure he'd mention that, but he was also sure that Asuka would prefer mental combat to patching someone up. If he did let her in, she would most likely yell at him about how stupid he was, risking his life for an ungrateful bastard like that. Also, if he died Shinji and Rei would be sad, and that would be annoying to her.

It would be very inconsiderate of him indeed, to die now and leave all the work of protecting them and this world to Asuka, he thought, smiling as he stretched out on the head of his Eva. Ensuring that he was unobserved was a simple matter, even with what had once been Naoko to avoid while fiddling with the security camera feeds.

Sohryu was the sanest of the souls in the other Evas because the bodies of Evas were far closer to angel than planetary human. A planetary human mind that attempted to transfer itself in would not be suited to such an existence, even discounting the years of isolation Unit 01 had experienced. Naoko had not had any warning or preparation. Yui had attempted to transfer herself intact, and been the most damaged because of it. Asuka's mother had attempted to impress her spirit, her will upon the Eva. Instead of desperately clinging to life or trying to become a god, she'd filled that vessel with the will to protect her daughter and the world.

That which was her as a planetary human had been left behind, most of her personality traits discarded as unsuitable to her new existence. Sohryu could not be considered the same person as Dr. Sohryu (not that Tabris would try to argue with Asuka about that), but she was as sane as an experimental warrior angel could be expected to be.

The only experimental part about Tsukiyomi, on the other hand, was what Tabris had altered to disguise the fact that Tsukiyomi's mind and soul had been designed and seeded by someone who knew exactly what they were doing.

Tabris was quite comfortable resting here. Tsukiyomi had a physical AT field, since he was after all an Eva. There was no need for Tabris to make an effort to sync with him: while the other pilots had to make an effort to open up their AT fields in Asuka's case and get Naoko to open up in Rei's case, the amount of contact between Tabris and Tsukiyomi was entirely at their discretion.

Right now there wasn't any need for Tsukiyomi's hand to be moved by the mind of Kaworu Nagisa as though it was his own hand, so now that Tabris thought about it, he wondered what Ritsuko's equipment would measure their sync ratio as. This was the general 'I'm fine' level of passive contact common among family members: even some Lilim reported being aware when relatives or loved ones died or were injured.

It must cause them so much extra worry, to not know if family members were dead or alive the instant they were out of one's sight… Imagine if every time Shinji went out to fight Tabris had no idea what was happening until it was over! What was that book series with the clock that said where all the family members were: asleep, at work, in mortal peril? Strange that even in a series where humans had 'magical' perceptions, the Lilim writer still thought they would need a _device_ for something so basic.

Tsukiyomi really didn't have any mental defense training whatsoever: the young Eva mind still wasn't quite up to controlling his own AT field without Tabris directing him. He would only be able to fight the way Yui had if he went berserk the way Yui had and sheer rage let him focus his soul, if in a clumsy fashion. Not unless Tabris copied his full combat data to him, which he was very reluctant to do. No, forget the combat data: it was the terraforming systems that really made angels dangerous to populated worlds.

It wasn't that Tabris didn't trust Tsukiyomi, it was that Tsukiyomi was young and still developing a personality. Tabris had been divided between naming the Eva spirit Hoshigami or Tsukiyomi: he'd settled on Tsukiyomi when the influence of all those battle simulations made the new spirit less interested in terraforming than combat, more willing to fight than to wait patiently and nurture. It would have been terrible if the angel's Eva was enough of a true angel to hate hurting others: dragging an innocent child who flinched from every blow no matter the target onto a battlefield? Yet the fact remained that Tsukiyomi was willing to use his power to harm others, so until Tabris saw proof that Tsukiyomi was beginning to learn the responsibility that came with power and would restrain himself from crossing any lines, Tabris simply wasn't going to give him too much power. To do so would be to tempt him to experiment with things he didn't know how to control or how to use responsibly yet, since Tsukiyomi really did want to protect the world he'd seen above him when he was turned on.

The desire to protect made people more dangerous than anything else.

Resting here with his Eva meant that Tsukiyomi would be aware if Tabris was in any real distress, and would warn him in time to get Shinji. It would have been nice to lie here without having to think or call up damaged files for awhile, but Tsukiyomi wanted to know how his pilot had gotten hurt. Tabris was trying to think of a tactful way to say, "I just ate your other father's soul: It really didn't agree with me. And oh, by the way, I found that he'd programmed you to tear mine into little bits, then eat about half of them, the ones with more memory data, less will and the S2 engine, so he could use you to escape the Moonbase and warn the UN about SEELE, not to mention give them data on what angels really were and how to counter us that wasn't distorted by the beliefs of SEELE's cult."

Actually, why was he trying to find words anyway? They were such an inefficient method of communication, even if he did mostly use them even with Shinji because both of them needed to stay in practice communicating the Lilim way. If the Eva didn't contain hardware programmed with words, the biological portion of it wouldn't have been up to learning them for at least another year, so best to keep it simple and use telepathy like normal people. Tsukiyomi hadn't sent words at him yet either, just mental nudges, anxiety for Kaworu's sake and the desire to know what the threat was, whether it had been dealt with or Tsukiyomi needed to worry about it coming after Kaworu Nagisa again.

Tsukiyomi always thought of him by his human name, the name in all his files. Kaworu was well aware that the Eva knew he was an angel, but the Eva's other father had firmly believed that the Eva series was supposed to defend humans against angels, not be turned against humanity to help angels destroy the world by SEELE. Since Kaworu was in fact human, even if he was not a Lilim, he'd respected Tsukiyomi's desire not to betray anyone and never forced him to acknowledge that Kaworu and Tabris were one and the same. The whole situation was too complicated for someone as young as Tsukiyomi to have to deal with it, so it was best to let him see things in simple terms for now, terms he could handle. Tabris had always intended to let the Eva broach the subject of Tabris' nature and what it meant that he wanted to defend this world when he was ready.

Bringing it up now, well, explaining it would also involve explaining that Tsukiyomi was an angel, and he didn't want to give the Eva an identity crisis or worry about hurting his builder-father.

Tsukiyomi was supposed to destroy Kaworu Nagisa if syncing with him revealed that Kaworu Nagisa was truly an angel instead of an altered human with some abilities copied from angels. Since angels were enemies to humanity and Kaworu Nagisa was not an enemy to humanity, then he was not an angel and the Eva did not need to eat the father who had given him his soul and taught him how to think beyond basic computer logic. Since the if/then statement did not apply to Kaworu Nagisa, then there was no need to mention what Dr. Bannon had done since there was no threat to his pilot.

If the Eva wasn't restrained in the cage, Tsukiyomi would have been fidgeting and shifting around uncomfortably, bothered by the nagging feeling that now both of his fathers must think he'd betrayed them.

Kaworu Nagisa because Tsukiyomi hadn't revealed the trap, and Dr. Bannon because if he had merged with Kaworu Nagisa, even if he'd only been in the edge of the older mind, then he would know that Kaworu Nagisa was an angel and yet Tsukiyomi had not eaten him.

It was a true pity, Kaworu reflected, that he couldn't bring Tsukiyomi to talk to his father. The Eva's soul was nowhere near being able to maintain two bodies at once. Like the clones, if Kaworu made him another body and moved him into it all the biological parts of the Eva would collapse into LCL, and then Kaworu would find himself in need of either another Eva or a very, very good explanation. Nor could Kaworu participate in a conversation like that even if he could bring the two of them together, since it was now theoretically possible that Dr. Bannon, after going over the files he'd copied, would be able to figure out how to actually kill Kaworu. He couldn't take that risk right now.

It _would _be possible for Shinji to act as a relay, letting Tsukiyomi move him the way a pilot moved an Eva, but Tabris didn't see Shinji letting the Eva do that anytime soon, not when he hadn't told Kaworu that someone was trying to kill him. The Eva hadn't known for sure that there was nothing Dr. Bannon could do to actually harm Kaworu without using the Eva, so he'd still left Kaworu in danger even if he hadn't let himself be used to harm Kaworu.

There really wasn't much Kaworu could do but keep lying here, proving by his presence that he still trusted Tsukiyomi, although he decided to reinforce that knowledge with soothing thoughts and by stroking the Eva's helmet a bit.

Dr. Bannon thought the Eva didn't have a soul, since unless SEELE snuck someone up to the base it hadn't had a chance to absorb one. Unless they'd fed it Dr. Itoh, although Kaworu had awoken the soul now called Tsukiyomi, moonshadow, well before then so the new mind could benefit from the simulation training. If the doctor had his way, (part of) Tabris would have become the Eva's soul, the angel becoming in truth what SEELE had told Dr. Bannon he was, a defender of humanity instead of a destroyer. It was elegant.

"Your other father wanted you to protect this world. You already have." By helping Kaworu stop Shinji and Rei from setting off Third Impact. "I'm not angry at you at all, and neither is he. You shouldn't have been in a situation like that in the first place. You shouldn't have had to make a choice like that. He was in far more danger than I was, so he needed more protection than I did. You weren't wrong."

The young behemoth was still far from comfortable. Tsukiyomi already wanted to go home, where the gravity wasn't so strong and the people working on it were his other father and his familiar tech staff instead of ones that had been working on other Evas and made the LCL he was submerged in here, instead of being out in vacuum like normal, smell of them. The Eva was homesick because this place stunk, and now his father was somewhere else, so home wasn't the same anymore? Evas were kept inside here so he couldn't even look up at home, and he didn't like it.

The uncomfortable, antsy feeling from worrying if his fathers were upset and he'd done something bad had just contributed to the desire to get out of this place.

_Pleasepleaseplease?_ If soul-father really wasn't mad, wouldn't he prove it by getting Tsukiyomi out of this horrible place? Soul-father wasn't punishing him, was he?

Feeling Kaworu waver, the Eva pressed his advantage. Please? Just for a bit, so he could move around? Ooh, maybe a live fire exercise?

"_I'll talk to Ritsuko_," Kaworu promised, conveying that it wasn't his decision but that of the human with shiny things on her face and yellow headfur.

Tsukiyomi was grumbly. Other-father was definitely better than Ritsuko. _Other-father_ would have let him run around for testing.

Kaworu decided not to explain to the Eva that Dr. Bannon thought he was just a tool, unless he'd happened to see what Kaworu did to his creation while he was in the angel's mind, in which case he might think the Eva was evil now. Kaworu would have to ask Shinji about that too, when it was time for Shinji to come back.

* * *

_When the next movie comes out and I figure out how to incorporate Mari into this, I'm thinking of giving her Tsukiyomi as her Eva, by the way. They will get along smashingly, by which I mean they will smash a lot of things._


	20. We Have the Technology

"So, what have I missed?" Jun asked.

"More dead angels down on the surface. The public thinks it was the attacking angel, but we saw that NERV's pilots nearly set off Second Impact themselves, although the First Child was involved and the smart money is on her being something like Tabris," Dr. Steve Bannon looked at Dr. Itoh for confirmation, since he was the one who'd worked on the 'artificial angel' project.

"SEELE seems to think so, from some of the discussions about Kaworu." Specimen KWR, Dr. Itoh's contribution to the war against the angels. The Fifth Child and the First were almost certainly both hosts. "They think she's Lilith's host body, the way he's Adam's."

Steve paled at that. "Seriously? How did that happen?"

Jun shrugged. "This is from after the point when they stopped telling me things I didn't need to know. I did take over the project from someone else, who was working on creating clones with Adam's genetic material: I gather he was removed for incompetence." 'Removed' was moonbase slang for 'removed from the area with oxygen,' or gotten rid of permanently in some other fashion, among those who knew the truth. Euphemisms didn't get you hauled in front of security and threatened: SEELE wanted the staff members who weren't in the know to stay oblivious. Dr. Itoh had been spared since the young angel requested it, but if he'd tried to warn others SEELE's tolerance of him would have run out fast. "Did you…"

"I didn't run into it, no." The thing that caused Second Impact, and he'd been that close to it? "I picked up a lot from him, though, enough to know that if I had woken it up, that would be bad. I'm not sure of the details, but he must have been keeping me away from the thing. If it wakes up, Tabris is convinced he's screwed. He's worried enough about it that I picked up the fear of it without picking up that it was in their with me. I guess it's dangerous no matter where it is." It had been on Antarctica, about as far away from people as you could get and still be on earth's surface, and it had still killed billions when it went off.

"That must be unpleasant. Having thoughts and feelings in your head that aren't yours." Unpleasant was an understatement. Shinji had gotten Dr. Bannon mostly straightened out, but he hadn't erased any of the extra data the doctor had picked up. In theory, they should want more information on the angels, but Jun Itoh still felt lucky that hadn't happened to him. The thought of it made his skin crawl, and SEELE wanted to do that to _everyone_?

Steve just raised an eyebrow, leaning on the counter. Seriously? Of _course _it wasn't damn pleasant. That was stating the obvious, and not enough of an understatement to be funny. It just came across as inane, and he was never in the mood for inanity. "The angel's down on the surface piloting the Eva I built. I tried to program it to kill him if he was too much of an angel, but that obviously didn't work." Shinji had clearly found out, and the trap would be dismantled if it hadn't already. It was possible Kaworu'd managed to hide his true thoughts from the Eva well enough to avoid triggering it. It was a machine, half-biological or not… Except it wasn't a machine, stolen knowledge informed him. Not anymore than angels were, at any rate, and angels were humans were… "Panspermia." The distribution of life throughout the universe.

"You didn't already know that?" Jun wondered, pouring the excess water off the mac and cheese he'd made for the sake of having something hot and quick. "Sorry, I should know how good they were at making everyone keep their knowledge to themselves, even in a confined space like that. I didn't know you knew SEELE was working to unleash their custom angel on the world and bring about Third Impact."

"I wasn't sure-No, I was sure, I just didn't want to believe I was suckered in that far. That the world was." That the organization he'd supported because they were working to continue the human race against such odds was really working to end it because they didn't think it was good enough (Tabris' knowledge again). "The Evas are just like your project: they're doomsday devices. More angels, just under human control, meaning SEELE's control. Or NERV's, but they want Third Impact too. The only technology we have to fight the angels and prevent Third Impact was engineered from the ground up to bite us in the ass and kill us all later. I don't know if it even is possible to make a safe Eva." But they needed something to fight the angels. "You're out of touch here?"

"No radio, no nothing, and I'm a geneticist, not an engineer."

"Lack of radio can probably be fixed, if you don't mind sacrificing a few appliances." Once again, Steve looked thoughtfully around the kitchen. "I knew he could teleport down to the surface, but when did he set all this up? And how? He probably bought the house, but where did he get the money? At least Shinji coming here because Tabris said so answers the question of why an angel bothered."

"This place may have been intended as a safehouse for humans from the beginning." Jun thought so too. "At first I thought he was stalking the boy, since there are a lot of books and other things from Shinji Ikari's childhood. If anything, it's like what my wife and I used to keep of our children's things as they grew up." The amount of the books that were related to nature or some form of science just made the resemblance clearer, sharper, more cutting. "How could they have gotten so close in a few scattered visits to earth that only _started _long after Shinji was past that age?" It had to be mental tampering, or… Sometimes the more innocent explanation was the more worrisome one.

"…One of the angels had two bodies," Steve said. "He could have been in two places at once the entire time." While Dr. Itoh was trying to keep him confined to limit the damage. While SEELE was monitoring him. "He's been on earth for years, doing who knows what?" Dammit.

"Did you pick up anything that might let us figure that out?"

"No. He doesn't think he's evil, but few do. Even SEELE clearly thinks they're the ones doing the best thing for the human race." Given his interrogation, the contempt they had for people like him and Dr. Itoh who turned against SEELE upon finding out that they were betraying humanity. "I worried him while I was there," he said with a bit of pride. "He was worried about me. Not just about what could happen _to _me, but what damage I could do. If Shinji could knock me out like that? I wonder if there's a way to go past an angel's AT field with psychic powers? Knock them out, hope their AT field goes down and you could finish them off. Wouldn't need an Eva then."

"If you trust those powers. You were absorbed by Tabris and who knows what he's done to Shinji. He's had years to meddle with him." When angels could encroach on and alter living organisms and computer systems? "They could be as much of a trap as the Evas are. As the program to engineer a pilot who could match and counter angel abilities was."

"Damn. Well, I guess it pays to be in charge of the effort to stop yourself." Not that most of humanity knew they needed to worry about SEELE or the Committee for Human Instrumentality. Oh, they didn't have the approval of a hundred percent of the population, but that was because of their stance on genetic engineering and transhumanism, not because the people suspected they wanted to wipe out humanity with its individuality instead of improving upon it and allowing it to survive. "Use material cloned from Adam to make Evas, they tell me, a design for mass production and oh, by the way, there's something called a dummy plug system we'd like to get working, using not-quite-braindead human bodies. Humanoid."

"You objected on moral grounds and one of them told you that the clones weren't really human, and you figured out that meant the pilot wasn't either?" Jun guessed.

"That, and the shortcuts I could take on the model under construction up there for Kaworu. That and his test results. Genetically engineered yes, and that would explain a lot of I didn't have access to the data that showed that angels had something that mapped to human genes amazingly well." Just in different types of matter. "If I wasn't working with Adam's flesh and computers to begin with. Setting up all the links there, the artificial nervous system and connections to the pilot gave me justification for doing all the analysis I wanted."

"That was your mistake," Jun said. "Just because they let you run the data doesn't mean they didn't notice that you were running it, and they know what it means. Once you had all of that in front of your face, they'd know it had to be obvious to you. So when you didn't say anything, when your productivity didn't even drop, that meant you had a clever plan. I just blew up when I figured it out. It was the assimilation that did it: they wanted to bring people up to the station for my so-called creation to practice on. I swallowed a lot of stuff before that, because it would be useful to have those powers on our side, and I assumed they knew what they were doing-No, they do know what they're doing. I assumed they were doing what they _said _they were doing. Absorbing humans, though, wasn't relevant to fighting angels at all. So I finally asked what the hell they were thinking, and once I was looking at the possibility that SEELE wasn't on the up and up… Hell, I wish they had been trying to take over the world. I knew that wasn't it right off, though. With the Eva tech and everything I saw and worked on myself, there isn't a conventional army with a prayer of stopping them. They wouldn't have needed to go so far, take so many 'risks' with Third Impact and angels if _that _was all it was_. _Letting your conquest get destroyed defeats the purpose."

"Oh? Right. At least if they were planning to rule the world, they'd have to keep it from being blown up or absorbed by an angel first." Steve gave him a thoughtful look, grey eyebrow raised. "How much have you had to drink?"

"There isn't any alcohol here. Not drinkable, anyway." Just what was in the first-aid kit. The young-looking Dr. Itoh sighed. "I've probably given myself mild heatstroke again, though. Why?"

"You sound a little muddled. Heatstroke?"

"It's hot outside here. Out in the jungle, it's like standing in a sauna." So many trees, all that transpiration. "It's _alive, _alive," Jun said with only a hint of irony to show he knew what he was quoting.

"Sounds like a real change from hydroponics and office plants." From white plastic walls surrounded by poisonous moon dust. Steve heard they made the pilot take a shower when he came back in until he learned to use his AT field to keep himself from actually coming in contact with the ground out there, or letting any of it settle on his skin. He knew the angel could survive vacuum: Kaworu had come out to watch them work on the Eva often enough. It had come in handy a few times, since the angel didn't have a bulky spacesuit enveloping him to worry about and had grown up in that gravity, so he could move fast when the situation called for it.

This would be a lot easier if Steve knew what Kaworu had really been feeling the time he'd darted forward to push one of the construction engineers out of the way of a falling arm. Lesser gravity or no lesser gravity, Evas were huge and that was a big damn piece of metal and muscle. Steve had picked up what Kaworu _supposedly _felt while the doctor was absorbed, but he wasn't going to trust that. Who felt guilt and understanding when they were supposedly doing this to save someone and that person was damn pissed-off and ungrateful? No one was going to feel only benevolent worry, with traces of actual fear both for themselves and the other person if the observers realized something was up, with the equivalent of a pissed-off snake hidden under their clothing, crawling around and looking for somewhere to do some real damage. There _should _have been revulsion, the anger Shinji clearly felt at the doctor for hurting someone who was just trying to help and the urge to just smash the damn thing.

Then again, didn't angels produce (or become?) planetary biospheres, the way Earth was born from Lilith? Weren't planets supposed to have humans climbing all over them, damaging the planet before they learned any better? Was Kaworu, Tabris' efforts to keep him out of important areas like a father repeatedly grabbing the baby back from taking a header off the countertop when it crawled over trying to peer at the edge? Or a guardian angel trying to get the proto-homonids to understand that no matter _how _interesting the gooey sticky stuff was or what could be made with it, the tar pits were dangerous. Kind of a combination of 'Aww, it's already developing curiosity!' and 'Oh dear, be careful!' instead of normal annoyance. Forget the basic desire for self-preservation and the aggression that should be prompted by someone trying to fucking kill it. At least Tabris either hadn't felt or hadn't let Steve feel that his efforts to kill the damn thing were fumbling, insignificant and thus _cute_.

Provided the angel really was an enemy, it was pleasing to imagine it trying to smile like it was utterly unconcerned while reporting to SEELE while hiding that there was a small animal running around under its clothing biting and clawing at it, even though Steve hadn't managed to get at any vulnerable areas.

If it wasn't an enemy, that really had been a dick move. Especially because if he _had _managed to get the angel to show discomfort or that it was distracted, it would be his fault if SEELE figured out something was up because of this. It wasn't like he'd managed to hide his own efforts to stop the cabal: what if he'd screwed up Kaworu's deception?

He could still feel that the kid who'd patched him up was pissed off at him, although most of it was a general level of pissed off at… what? Anything? Everything? Scientists? Older men? People who were supposed to help him and his friends and instead screwed them over?

Steve could tell that when Shinj said he didn't trust anyone over thirty, he hadn't been joking despite the smile. There was a _lot _of hatred and anger in that kid, held back but there and looking for a target. Which begged the question of why the angel hadn't done anything about it, if he really was the kid's father figure.

Then again, the impression he'd gotten of the angel… Those emotions were buried even deeper, otherwise he would have gotten angry at Steve, wouldn't he? To be pissed off at someone being a pain in the ass was human, and angels were related to humans, anyway. Still, if Kaworu hadn't felt his own anger, not even with an enemy trying to kill him and one of the Council members right in front of him, would he have recognized Shinji's?

He'd still patched Steve up, so he was a pretty nice kid, but that just meant he was too nice to let that anger out to play very often. It wasn't good to keep things dammed up like that: if Dr. Bannon hadn't had the Eva to work on, traps to set and hide, something _productive _to do with that anger?

Well, the well-leashed desire to destroy was a good trait in an Eva pilot, he supposed, especially when he could see what Jun was talking about through the windows over the kitchen counters.

Green.

After so long looking down at the Earth and seeing red, seeing a wounded, bleeding, _dying _planet, to see green like this? To hear birds and need to put on mosquito repellant before heading outdoors in the evenings (Jun had already warned him)?

It wasn't dead.

Holy _shit_, it wasn't dead. After so long up there, trapped in that bottle, the only place inhabited by humans on an otherwise dead planetoid and only a few screw-ups or a little sabotage because someone had gone insane (or wanted to stop SEELE?) away from dying, to see living things that could manage without human help just fine? To hear noise that wasn't made by people or machinery?

He was actually trying not to think about it. Not to stare too long at the jasmine that was flowing over the balcony's railings, because it felt like hysteria. Like a nervous breakdown. It was such a _relief_ that if he let himself believe this was real, he might let go of the control he'd used to fight off despair for years, might let the emotions _he _was holding back get loose, and then he didn't know what he'd do. Oh, shake, cry, maybe scream or punch a hole in something, but it was trying to pick up the pieces afterwards that worried him.

Still being alive himself was a plus, but while there was life there was hope. There was hope, holy _hell_ there was hope for this battered old world yet, the one people'd said was only a few more mistakes away from destruction _decades _before Second Impact sterilized about eighty percent of it.

He felt the air pressing down on him – fifteen pounds per square inch, he still remembered the Imperial measurements – but it was the force rising up inside him that almost worried him more, because now it wasn't just a matter of fighting for revenge or to try to keep the angels from getting their hands on what was left of the planet.

Was that what he'd built the Eva for? Really? Not to defend the survivors, but because if humanity was doomed to die out, then he wasn't going to let anyone else have the planet? Had it really just been a massive 'Fuck you' to Adam, the angels and SEELE, a scorched earth or rather flooded red Earth policy? That if humanity was going down, all of them were doing down with his people, and screw the future because it was already fucked beyond repair?

But what if it wasn't? What if this world really could be repaired? "Do you think he did this? This is a flat island, the LCL should have seeped into the water table already, there's no way a garden like this should be just a few meters from the water's edge."

Because angel powers could be replicated: that was the entire point of the Evas. Aside from Ritsuko Akagi and a couple other deceased women, he was the world's expert on Eva development and here with him was the man who had (supposedly) developed SEELE's tame angel. The one they'd told the staff who were still loyal to humanity was a human with a few extras that would let him defend the Earth.

If they really could create artificial angels, or rather _humans _with angel abilities? If they could replicate _this? _

"I can't think of any other explanation," Dr. Itoh finally admitted, and Steve felt a little better when he saw the hint of fear in those black eyes.

Not fear of the angel or fear of losing: fear that they'd screwed up.

Wasted _years_.

Forget Eva 05, forget Kaworu: there were more Evas and angels where they came from. The two of them had thought they were contributing to the defense of their world, but what about afterwards?

What if instead of either becoming bitter and downtrodden or scheming a way to destroy one angel and one threat to the world, they could have been _saving it_? What if they'd overlooked… No, they had overlooked it. It had been right in front of them the entire time.

Eva technology, angel technology? "He turned LCL into a body for me: what else could he do with it? Turn it into a jungle like this one? Turn it into…" Steve shook his head, because there were just so many possibilities, chief among them _getting rid of the LCL_. Even if their first prototype could only do that much, just getting rid of that damn stuff would allow life to reclaim the oceans and the barren ground, the way islands became green again after burned by volcanoes. "_Fuck_," he said finally, putting his slow old head in his hands.

Forget SEELE, forget the idea that instrumentality was the only choice they had unless they wanted to just lie down and die either with the bang of Third Impact or the whimper of slow starvation.

They could rebuild this world. They had the technology, it had been right in front of them the entire time and they'd been too focused on SEELE to see that!

Or was that what SEELE had counted on? Used their anger, hatred and despair to blind them to the real possibilities that lay before them, the real hope they should have been using their talents to create?

"Damn. Old. Bastards," Steve cursed, and Dr. Itoh (the older of the two, although he looked younger now), bit back the fatherly instinct to tell the other man to watch his language, even though he'd also let his standards slip when it came to that. What point was there in setting a good example when there weren't any real children around them and there wouldn't be much of a next generation anyway? There'd only been single men and women up there, who didn't have much tethering them to earth. Who were willing to leave everything behind to work on research too classified (every nation on earth would kill for Eva military tech) for them to be allowed down to the surface anytime soon, if ever.

They'd already said goodbye to the world, already mourned its loss: was that why they'd given it up for dead so easily?

SEELE and NERV were recruiting all the best minds: of course they were, when they were supposedly Earth's best defense and best hope for the future. The people they hadn't recruited didn't know the truth about the angels, didn't know that abilities like Kaworu's existed and could be replicated.

Right now, the two of them were the only two people who knew the truth and weren't under the control of the groups that wanted Third Impact. They weren't just any two people, either: Dr. Itoh had been hand-picked to take over the pilot and dummy plug clone angel production and Dr. Bannon had created Eva 06 and the Eva Series. If anyone on earth or off it could do this, it was them.

But they needed teams, needed a lab, needed samples… "We need to get in contact with him. Is he watching you somehow?" Dr. Bannon asked, almost hoping the angel was because that meant they could explain what they'd realized and hopefully it would negotiate.

He'd _wanted _it to be an enemy, something he could kill, when there was no hope. Now?

"I don't think so. I had to find where the food and medicine stockpiles were hidden on my own." Not that it had been that hard.

"Well, you said it didn't want you to contact the outside world, so if I put a transmitter together, hopefully it would wonder what we're trying to tell the outside instead of jamming the signal without listening to it," Steve said, already making plans, already thinking about how to accomplish this.

Who wouldn't want to save the world?

Who wouldn't want to believe that it could be saved?

Oh, right. SEELE, and NERV. Not to mention that an angel Dr. Itoh experimented on and he tried to give a lobotomy didn't have much reason to trust them with more DNA samples or whatever it knew about its powers.

He could see Shinji giving him a level stare already, because the teenager had psychic warfare capability and a giant robot, so Steve had to be very, very stupid if he thought he was getting another chance to kill Kaworu or Jun was going to get more clones to experiment on.

Still, it was worth a try. They had to try. There actually was something at stake.

The world, their world, was still here. Had been here all along.

Waiting.

* * *

_Okay, hands up everyone who's heard of the _Legacy of Kain_ series. Do check it out, since the writing and acting are awesome, ok?_

_In the first game, Kain is given a choice: it seems fairly simple, sacrifice himself to save the world or conquer a world that is slowly dying and will eventually become a wasteland if he doesn't sacrifice himself now. "Let's call it a two-sided coin." However, it turns out that the game is rigged. If he dies, the world is also screwed, thanks to an ancient genocidal war, an eldritch abomination, the local magitech/laws of physics and a lot of other stuff. By taking the selfish option, he bought himself time to try to find an actual solution, an actual way to save Nosgoth. "Suppose you throw a coin enough times. Suppose, one day, it lands on its edge." This kicks off a saga of time travel and gambit pileups, with Kain trying to create a timeline in which the world isn't destroyed, other people trying to make sure the world (or at least its current inhabitants...) stays doomed and Raziel doesn't even know what he wants, especially once he realizes that he was doomed to painfully mutate into a monster either way, so Kain's betrayal was just the option that gave him a fighting chance of not ending up in eternal hellish madness. Of course... Well, long epic story._

Radiant Historia_ also has the concept of a world that is dying, with the survivors fighting over the fertile land that's left and time being bought via sacrifice. However, do enough sidequests, and it turns out there may be a magitech solution to the real problem. There's a line of biomagitech research that offers the first actual hope there's been since all this began, since there are timelines stemming from it where the world _doesn't_ end._

_If you go into a fight thinking you're going to lose, you're probably going to lose. However, since angels can create new worlds, and angels are basically human, and humanity's already figured out how to make Evas, they really shouldn't need Third Impact to give people godlike powers. The technology is clearly there, they just need to be allowed to apply and improve on it without interference from conspiracies._


	21. Miscats

_I need to stop doing things like watching Puchi/Petit Evangelion that make me write filler and put this on hold until the dratted third movie comes out and I can get to the actual plot._

* * *

"So, what do you think?" Kaji casually asked the range instructor.

The man whistled, long and considering. "Haven't seen anyone before who's almost as good as the Little Miss."

"Rei Ayanami?" the agent guessed.

A nod. "Can't kidnap him, force him into ski bootcamp and drag him to the Winter Olympics either. Moon's nobody's territory." So what country could he compete for, when he didn't have any records beyond his origin and didn't have citizenship anywhere. Running a hand through salt-and-pepper hair, he gave Kaji another considering look before adding, "That and he's definitely modified. Not that it's illegal up there." But was Kaji going to give him, or the Little Miss, a hard time because of it?

"Really? How can you tell?"

"It's obvious, and it would be obvious to the Olympic committee too," 'Anji' said as Kaworu finished off another set of targets.

Since he didn't volunteer any more information than that, Kaji had to give him a nudge. "Is it the eyes or something? They've both got those red ones."

The man snorted. "No idea what that's about, but that wouldn't have anything important to do with it." Was it some prejudice or internal law that was making them label the genetically modified children with red eyes, like they were monsters? "The eye is as good as a part of the brain. Oh, there's some stuff that you could do fiddling with the lenses, but you're still talking a lot of rods and cones that detect photons with specific frequencies. Oh, women can have better color vision than men if they end up seeing two colors of red, and that's genetic, but what does the real work is what's behind the eyes. What we actually 'see' is basically just a three-d animation our brains put on for us. I like to tell the trainees that their video card's smarter than they are."

Human beings had a big blind spot directly where they were looking: inescapable because of the necessity of having an optic nerv hook-up. The brain was just so good at compensating for it in the generated image the conscious mind actually perceived that it was very hard for even a professional to demonstrate that blind spot to someone else. "Why we won't have anyone saying anything about the Little Miss. Not her fault if she's a little weird, with someone messing around with her brain. Good to see her learning how to smile, though." Looked like just slow development, not her frontal lobes getting too messed up. "He's better about that than she is, but he's not as good a shot."

"Oh?" Kaji asked casually. "Seems pretty incredible to me." Oh, he might miss the first couple times he fired a weapon, but that was figuring out what he needed to compensate for. After that?

"It would be hard to demonstrate it to you, but he's thinking too much, the wrong way. You can see it in his eyes. When you're training a sniper, you have to keep in mind that there's one part of you that's good at _how _to shoot, and another that's good at _if _to shoot. It's important to make sure that both parts are doing their jobs, but also to make sure they're not trying to do each other's jobs. Ever notice that in a game, the more important a kick or throw is, the more likely it is to get screwed up?"

"I thought that was just Murphey." Or just that Kaji was noticing it more when there were seconds on the clock than the rest of the game.

"No. It's because when they get stressed, they start going through all the steps, trying to do it with their conscious mind like a rookie instead of just letting their bodies do it like normal. The thinking gets in the way of the doing. Snipers, though…"

"So what's his weakness?" Kaji asked. "The one that makes Ayanami better than him?"

"The Little Miss hasn't figured out that sometimes she shouldn't obey orders yet. It'll screw up her aim when she does until she works it out, but right now there's nothing getting in the way when she shoots. He thinks about it too much. Every time he fires, he's thinking about what he's really doing, even when it's a target that doesn't look anything like a person. Acts like an old soul, too, so he'd have grown out of it by now if he was going to. Whether or not that's a weakness when he still shoots better than the rest of us is up to you."

"Hey, you're the one who said 'Too much,'" Kaji pointed out.

"That depends which side of the gun you're on. For his sake, he's letting it bother him too much. For everyone else's?" The man shrugged, and went about his work without saying anything else.

* * *

Hikari, Touji and Kensuke stared as the contents of the shoeboxes tumbled out onto the grass.

It was Touji that finally said what him and Kensuke were both thinking. "_Damn, _man. Your cat is a player."

Shinji scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "The black one's adopted?"

* * *

Thump.

Thump-thump.

Thump.

"Eee!"

It was the piercing whistle blast that finally woke Jun and Steve. "_Nobody _goes _anywhere near _the water until _all of you _are wearing swimsuits and floaty wings!"

There was a chorus of sad "Mew?" "Nyan? and other sounds.

"Don't mew me! Do you want to swim or not?" a female voice barked like she'd gotten an A in Drill Sergeant. "Anyone who goes in the waves without getting dressed first will have a time out if I have to make Rei sit on you!"

"Wark!" Splash.

"Mrew?"

"The penguin doesn't count!" Another blast of the whistle. "Boys first, since there are less of you. Girls, what did I say about being human without having clothes on! Change, now!"

When the two adults managed to get changed, they found a small sea of blue and grey heads, distinguishable from each other only by different colors of one-piece swimsuits and swim trunks on the beach in front of the house. Shinji, a larger blue-haired girl and a redhead in a pale yellow dress and a sunhat were riding herd on them, or attempting to. Shinji was busy blowing up the floaty wings with a hand pump while the blue-haired one grabbed kids out of the squirming, running, babbling and digging herd in order to make them hold still to have floaty wings jammed onto their arms, while the other girl surveyed the area with a commanding and disapproving look, arms folded and skirt blowing in the wind.

Beyond them, a penguin was squawrking loudly as it tried and failed to run away from a wave three times taller than it was.

A _blue _wave.

Another whistle blast. "No chasing the penguin! If he loses one feather off his hide, Misato'll take it out of yours!"

"Is it really okay to let them use their fields to block out the UV?" Shinji wondered.

"If you want to try to get them to hold still long enough to let the sunscreen sink in, be my guest. Idiot. We can't even wait until they're tired: verdammt S2 perpetual-motion-machines."

"Perhaps if we had blown up the beach balls before our arrival," the other girl said, frowning thoughtfully as she released the current child and fished another one out of the shrieking mass.

"While they still had claws? The Ikari family must have passed on only the very stupid genes." The speaker put her hand up automatically to shade her eyes even though she was wearing the sunhat, surveying her troops without commenting on the ones who had gotten into the bundle of foam noodles and were attempting to bop each other with things about twice as tall as they were. "Almost done, then we can start on the kiddie pool if the penguin hasn't gotten its act together by then. Its ancestors must be ashamed." That it had just gotten slammed into the sand by a little wave like that, sheesh.

"We?" Shinji wondered aloud as he finished the last pair of wings and looked around for an unwinged clone only to finally look down and find one in khaki swim trunks practically standing right on his flip-flops, looking up at him with sad eyes and holding up his bare arms hopefully. "Oh, again? It's not that we don't like you, Ghost, it's that how are we supposed to notice you if you hide all the time?" Shinji asked as he gave the boy a hug and then started putting the wings on, then picked him up. "Come on. Since you were the last to get your wings, you can be the first in the water."

"Ee!" the boy exclaimed happily, smiling widely.

Steve wondered if he was thinking that had gone just as planned because it was a cloned angel. Jun knew it was an evil, manipulative plot because it was a small boy and he'd been a father.

Since the redhead, clearly the German-Japanese Second Child, Asuka Sohryu, didn't object, the herd of already-sandy children stampeded after him into the water, and Ghost was the last one to actually touch the water, since Shinji lowered him down after walking past where the waves were crashing. Ghost didn't seem displeased, since given how high the water was on Shinji, that was probably deep enough for him to wiggle his legs without feeling the bottom. The clone immediately attempted to dive, an effort that was hindered by the floaty wings.

"May I join them?" Rei Ayanami asked Asuka.

"Yeah, sure." Duh. "I'm counting on you to make them keep their wings on and stay inside the blue. If they get too far outside it, it'll be annoying to spot them. But make sure the swimsuits stay on!" Asuka said, shaking her finger at Rei. She didn't trust them one inch, especially since that damn idiot Shinji had let the boys realize that if they took their clothes off, Shinji would panic and run after them, which was always hilarious and then they got grabbed and got to wrestle with Shinji while he tried to force them back into their pants. Misato just threw beer cans at them, which wasn't fun because beer tasted yucky unless it was a little bit in a lot of milk.

"And what are you looking at?" she demanded next of the onlookers. One old man and one salaryman-looking one around Kaji's age. Boring. If she was going to be at the beach, she should at least get hot guys to look at, even if they only had a little rectangular patch of real ocean thanks to some magnetic or something poles Kaworu had dug up in one of the geofront's ancient hidden alien storage closets, for when they wanted to get the LCL out of part of the damn thing in order to simulate some planetary environment. Well, it wasn't like Kaworu was slacking off, when he was the reason _they _were able to play hooky without anyone catching on, but still.

Beaches were supposed to contain beautiful women, like her, and hot topless men with nice abs. Compared to the pre-Impact episodes of Baywatch and surfing movies, Shinji being the only guy around was pathetic. He wasn't even topless! What a gyp. Although at least he _had _abs, unlike most of the guys back in Germany who just sit around all the time, and that white shirt he was wearing to protect himself from getting fried was clinging kind of nicely…

Bah.

It wasn't like she was interested in damn-Kaworu,-who-said-he-could-put-his-head-on-her-lap-anyway, but this ratio absolutely sucked and boring old men weren't helping improve the aesthetics of her first real trip to the beach.

She might have considered bringing Touji (with Hikari, of course) and Kensuke because at least Touji was an athlete even if he didn't have two brain cells to rub together, but neither of them could keep their damn mouths shut.

Well, at least the addition of extra slave labor to her outing meant Shinji could stay in the water until he got tired enough to take the shirt off so it wouldn't weigh him down. "Stop watching us like creepy old men and get down here!" she ordered.

The whale and shark-shaped floats weren't going to inflate themselves.

* * *

_Finally watched Petit/Puchi Eva. _

_And lo, there was much WTF. I liked the unzipping the white background character concept, and the whole ghost/ninja thing as a play on what xxxHolic and some other series did with not bothering to fill in crowd scenes. _

_The reason ninja costumes are black is that stagehands wore black costumes in certain plays while moving around things on-set, and the audience learned to tune them out the way the actors ignored them. So, to have someone in black suddenly coming to everyone's attention, appearing out of the background, would be like being attached by the furniture. I'm wondering when someone will do something similar with the white/gray outline crowd scene people in an anime. Until then, Puchi!Kaworu having ninja skills, wearing a ghost costume that isn't quite like all the other generic ones but still gets ignored by Shinji and the other main characters and such is the closest thing to it I've seen._

_Since humans react differently to different colors (think what red means vs. what pink does) and twins raised together define themselves by their differences, the kittens will begin to develop distinct personalities. _

_'The black one's adopted' - Shinji is the single dark-haired human among Kaworu's clone-child & grandchild (Rei's) menagerie. Above that, they're talking about the skiing-and-shooting winter biathalon Olympic event. My family actually did have a rideable shark float for our pool when I was growing up, and there were whale ones - I can definitely see Rei ordering those and Asuka telling her to get some sharks, too._


	22. Harmonies

_I put off updating this fic until Eva 3.0 came out partially because I wanted to include Mari, and while 2.0 established that _something _really weird was going on with her, it didn't give a lot of clues as to what._

_Now 3.0 is out, and I still don't know what the heck is up with Mari. The only thing I'm sure of is that I really, really, _really _want her in this fic. _

_So it looks like we'll be stuck waiting until 4.0 comes out and hopefully explains what she is and how she knows/why she says certain things. I thought I should post something, though, since I did say I'd get more done after 3.0 came out._

_What is really interesting in 3.0 is that there's now confirmation of the fan theory that Rebuild was actually a sequel to the anime. Apparently it is, and this isn't even the second time the events have occurred: Kaworu's Groundhog Day Looping, and according to the voice actor he was told to do a Kaworu who had seen _several _iterations of these events. So the manga could even be in continuity – since everything's new to Kaworu in the manga, either it's the first timeline or he hasn't started remembering previous timelines yet._

_Trying to find an outcome where humanity survives with the planet intact enough for long-term survival, unlike the anime, where people can come back but the biosphere is toast?_

_And 3.0 actually remembers that these are terraformers here! I am most pleased. _

_I like Sohryu for Asuka's last name because of the blue dragon of the east thing. _

_Dragon just seems like perfect imagery for Asuka, although something fire-breathing would be good._

* * *

Frowning, Shinji reached into his cello. His frown deepened as he pulled his hand back and held what he'd found up to his face. He wanted to ask "_How?!" _but what he ended up saying was the answer to his own question. "Ghost."

The white-collared kitten twisted around in his grip to smugly lick at his thumb.

Kaworu was already reaching out, so Shinji deposited the kitten into his hands so Shinji could inspect the inside of his cello for scratches and Kaworu could be the one to explain to it about instruments, the fragility and unsuitability for stowing away thereof.

"You were told that there would be no cake," Rei was reminding one of her own once Shinji was satisfied that his instrument was undamaged.

"Is it only these two?" Shinji asked, sitting down on one of the four folding chairs Misato had brought in her car when she dropped them off, before leaving to go do karaoke (Shinji shuddered at the thought) with Kaji and Ritsuko. They were hoping to get Ritsuko drunk enough that they could sound her out about Gendo's plans and her own loyalties.

"She is here because Ghost is here," Rei explained. "He let her have some of his cake," the one Rei bought to celebrate the one-month anniversary of the clones being removed from the LCL, being freed from that artificial womb.

Shinji felt Asuka reflexively give the kitten a mental tug when it reached out: hearing the word cake, the little thing had begun to mentally echo the word, which would have been fine if she hadn't been broadcasting in public mode instead of just on one of the family channels.

Since everyone other than them had their shields up, none of them would have heard the kitten, but just to be on the safe side… The other angels would be able to hear them, too.

Then there was the fact that if people's shields were down a little, a child's request for something would act on their minds a lot more powerfully than a normal subliminal message. This was how parents were _supposed _to know if a child crying meant that they were cold, wet, hungry, tired, in need of more mental stimulation for brain development or what so they could do the right thing and get the kid to shut up.

At first Shinji was afraid that the kittens would walk all over him and Asuka the way they were Rei and Kaworu, but even though Shinji had actual training, Asuka was almost as good at dealing with them as he was, or at least dealing with them mentally.

It was… kind of sad how much of this was reflex. When humanity hadn't been able to do this for thousands of years, would the instincts and reflexes still be intact unless they were just that vital, went just that deep?

Maybe Asuka was a little strict with them, but she knew that the other angels were out there, and if even Shinji could hear that she was telling the kitten to shut up not just to shut up, or because Mommy didn't want to hear it, but that there were predators out there and Mommy wanted to keep the little thing safe?

Irritated, and prickly, but she still loved the brainless balls of fluff even if their brainlessness annoyed her, but most of that anger was directed at potential enemies. The way her eyes were scanning the crowd of commuters now just in case any of them had heard anything made something tighten in Shinji's chest.

Feeling someone watching him, he turned to see Kaworu looking at him sympathetically. Just a wisp on the edge of Kaworu's mind, of '_that's what you should have had_.' That protectiveness, a mother and father who were willing to fight for him instead of ones that wanted to sacrifice him.

When Asuka put the kitten down now, on Kaworu's lap instead of Rei's so the two of them could snuggle together (because cake was love), Shinji had to look away before Asuka's blue eyes turned to him and asked him what _he _thought he was looking at.

He didn't turn his head fast enough: "Are you _blushing_?" she demanded, and now he had to duck his head frantically sending off _don't look/leave me alone it's embarrassing _signals until he felt her roll her eyes and radiate _Stupid Shinji. _

"_I think I'm in love_," he said to himself, in the privacy of his own head. Asuka… She really was like a mother, wasn't she? A good one?

And he realized this _now_? When they were going to perform in public, they'd gotten the license and everything? Well, it was probably better than figuring it out while he was trying to fight angels, but still. It was taking all of his focus to keep this from leaking, and the very fact that he'd locked his emotions down tight was making Kaworu and Rei glance at him to confirm that he wasn't concealing an injury or something.

Kaworu shushing Rei was semi-private, but Shinji didn't need to read the thought to tell that Kaworu must be telling her that this was one of the planetary human things, and not to bother her brother when he was trying to maintain control.

At least Rei hadn't figured it out yet. Shinji knew he had to keep her from finding out _at all costs_, because although Kaworu had just made it clear that he would be happy if Shinji found some nice people and Asuka was a candidate, Rei was a little more hands-on and would step-up her efforts to ensure that Asuka was willing to make Rei some little Shinjis.

Shinji wasn't actually party to those negotiations, thanks to sticking his fingers in his ears and making it clear that he was _not listening_, but he'd caught Asuka murmuring to herself in the bathroom, trying out the phrase, "Empress Sohryu of Mars," with a contemplative air that seemed as though she thought the prospect of having her own planet had a nice ring to it.

Even if the planet came with a Shinji.

It wasn't like Shinji would mind taking Asuka's last name. He hated the name Ikari, being connected to his father and his insane mother. Although the fact that Gendo Rokubungi had taken his wife's last name wasn't really a vote in its favor.

Unlike the rest of them, Kaworu didn't need to check over his instrument.

That was because he was cheating by encroaching on it, not that even Asuka was going to complain about doing that to a very good violin. Not when this was the violin Kaworu had learned on, a violin that had been shipped up to the moonbase, spent years there and now shipped back down to earth to join Kaworu, and shipping could be rough enough on instruments without g-forces and years of lower gravity, air pressure and inconstant atmosphere involved.

Even though Shinji hadn't heard of the maker, judging from Asuka's reaction SEELE hadn't spared any expense, and doing something like that to a good instrument, an antique?

Kaworu had _better _take good care of it.

That left Kaworu to attend to the kittens while the rest of them got ready to play. Shinji was lucky that focusing on radiating 'I'm busy' vibes was natural enough under the circumstances that pretty soon Rei was displaying the same emotion, focused on her instrument and sheet music.

Of the four of them, she was the least practiced: she'd only started playing when she was sent to school. They had a music club, and Gendo had told her to sign up for it because Yui was a musician.

Shinji's cello had belonged to her: he supposed that Rei was lucky that Gendo wasn't really interested in music and thought the viola was close enough. Not that Rei had really chosen the viola, not as such: they'd wanted a viola player and Rei had gone along with that.

Just like Kaworu with Misato and the kittens, sometimes Shinji felt a little weird about how close Rei was to Kaworu. She was Shinji's little sister, after all: was she leaning on Kaworu for advice instead of him because Shinji was somehow lacking? Still, they were both angels, so he guessed it made sense. Not just that she saw Kaworu as a role model, but Rei had trouble understanding a lot of the same things Kaworu had trouble understanding, so she'd ask him to try to explain what he'd figured out, about how to be an angel in a world of planetary human things, a world where people didn't make accommodations for angels because they didn't know they existed.

Well, they did know about the other angels. Giant monstrosities were a little hard to miss. But the only ones who knew that angels were _people _weren't talking, and it was unfair enough that Shinji had to take a breath and not make a fist, not when he might damage his bow.

Kaworu was family, and it made sense that Rei would connect with the person who was like her, just like Kaworu's clones followed around the adult that was like them, since they thought like planetary humans more than angels.

It made Shinji wonder: would he be so close to Kaworu if there'd been someone else, anyone else? His aunt and uncle were human, sure, and family, but they weren't close, not in the same way.

It was Kaworu that Rei had an open data channel with, probably asking about instruments and if he would correct her if she did anything wrong. Kaworu didn't play the viola, but he could and would access the internet and do research if _Shinji _wanted help with something, so…

Maybe part of it was that it was _weird _to be around people with open minds that weren't Kaworu. Everyone else around them was still curled up tight, faceless masses, but in addition to Kaworu's soft silver there was a soft blue now, and Asuka's flashes of red. She wasn't unshielded, but then Shinji wasn't either. Planetary humans had shields for good reasons and it would be stupid not to use them, but he could feel her prowling around the bars, not caged in by fear like everyone else, but wary, and ready.

That was it. Not the bars of a cage, but _teeth_.

The only other person whose emotions he'd felt before was Kaworu, and Kaworu was family, so maybe that was part of why ever since they'd told Asuka…

He clamped down on those thoughts, because the others were almost ready. Once they were actually performing they'd be trying to read each other, not just body language and how they played but thoughts too, in order to perform as a group despite not having practiced as a group before.

Tabris had helped teach Shinji, and Asuka had practiced a few times since moving in with them, but this was their first time playing all together. If it weren't for the fact they could read each other, Shinji would have been mortified at the thought of trying this for the first time _in public_, but pressure just made it better practice, right?

Needing to coordinate themselves without being obvious about it… He and Tabris had years of practice, but soon the next angel would come, and who knew which three evas would be sent out when it did. They had to be ready to fight together.

He found himself glancing at Asuka, who wore the same white dress she'd worn to the beach. She'd insisted that the others dress up a little too, and taken Rei out to pick up the blue thing she was wearing now. It looked really cute on her, although Shinji was trying not to think about that because this was his sister.

A sharp, impatient tug, Asuka asking without words what he thought he was looking at, and when he turned back to her and she didn't tug at him again he realized that she wasn't wondering why he'd looked at her, she was wondering why he was staring into space past Ayanami.

Why he'd looked away from Asuka.

"_I think she may actually like me_" he realized, and it was kind of hard not to grin like a fool.

He was used to warm grey, and it was nice to feel cool blue washing around the edge of his mind, just making sure that he was safe and letting him know that she was safe because family worried about other people and didn't want to worry those other people, but Kaworu had adopted Shinji when he was little and was kind of stuck with him now. While Rei was stuck with Shinji because they were family.

Asuka wasn't family, but she might she might be willing to be, well, with Shinji, and…

When Gendo Ikari told his son, "Good job," Shinji hadn't felt any sense of accomplishment. No, he'd just stared, wondering why the man was saying something like that. It disgusted him, because it was blindingly obvious that his father didn't care about his feelings, so he was only saying that to try to make Shinji feel happy that he'd impressed his father, make him want to do it again? Not just a cold-blooded bastard but an arrogant one, just assuming that Shinji would give a damn about what Gendo Ikari thought after the bastard _abandoned him_? Why should Shinji give a damn about someone who didn't give a damn about Shinji?

Thinking that Asuka liked him, though? That Asuka thought he was worth liking?

It felt like he'd won some kind of award. Like he was ten feet tall.

It made him want more of that feeling.

Well, he'd better start by not screwing up in front of all the people they wanted to stop and listen, he knew, and nodded when Rei apologized for making them wait for her to finish getting ready and asked if they were ready to begin.

* * *

_In Petit Eva/Evangelion at School, one of the scenes has the littlest Rei (there are three Ayanami sisters) trying to buy cake. She does not have quite enough, but Kaworu comes to the shop, still in his ghost costume, and gives the clerk some change so she can have the cake. _

_Thus acquiring a stalker. Ah, puppy love. _


End file.
